Brooks Koepka reads his putt on the 13th hole during the second round of the 101st PGA Championship at Bethpage Black. © Darren Carroll/PGA of America

World No 1 Brooks Koepka has just one thing on his mind in 2020 and it's not the looming Rory McIlroy but more major wins.

"I think we know the four tournaments I'm looking forward to," said four-time major champion, who returns from a three-month injury to tee it up with defending champion Shane Lowry and England's Tommy Fleetwood in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship tomorrow.

"That's pretty obvious. They are what everybody gears their year around.

"I'm trying to get in the swing of things to start it off, obviously. But the majors are what everybody is remembered by.

"We can all sit here and know how many majors Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson won. But I don't know how many tournaments they won.

"You're remembered by your majors. That's where my focus is, trying to play well there."

Koepka had stem cell treatment on his left knee shortly after losing out to McIlroy in the Tour Championship in Atlanta in August.

He returned in October but slipped on wet concrete in the CJ Cup in South Korea and "re-tore" his patella tendon — “That’s excruciating. It’s a lot of pain. It’s not fun.” — forcing him to withdraw from the Presidents Cup team.

Since suffering the injury, the Floridian (29) has seen world No 2 McIlroy add another win to his CV and reduce the gap at the top of the rankings to just 1.2314 points.

But far from fretting about his ranking, he's simply excited to be able to practice again with the Masters just 85 days away.

"I miss competition," he said. "I'm just excited to hit balls. I have enthusiasm to get out there and go play.

"Last year, there wasn't much practice. I just couldn't do it with my knee. I couldn't get on my left side. I couldn't squat down in a bunker. I struggled to get down and read a putt. Thankfully that's in the past now."

Brooks Koepka © Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

As for McIlroy assertion last week that he feels like he's the best player in the world when he's on his game, Koepka had no issues.

"Rory should believe that," he said. "Everybody playing should think that. If you don't think you're the best player, what's the point?

"Everybody comes here trying to win. That's the goal. If you don't believe you're the best deep down, then there's something wrong with you. You might as well quit."

Koepka welcomes the European Tour's introduction of its stringent new pace of play policy this week, as does Bryson DeChambeau, who he called out for slow play last year.

“Considering how far I'm hitting, I don't think that will be an issue anymore,” he said of the new four-point plan to tackle the problem, referring to his new, beefed up physique.

“I love it. I love it. I told you guys, even back at -- on the PGA TOUR, when stuff was happening, I told you guys, I welcome it. I was playing under the rules and there was no rhyme or reason to be called out, other than the fact that it looked like it was a really, really long time that it took, and it was, absolutely. I'm not saying it wasn't.

“But I was playing under the rules at that point in time, and there's no reason or why I should have been given so much heat, considering other things that had occurred that day and previous days of other people that I played with and other things that occurred. It's just .01 per cent of the time that that happens on Tour, which it happens literally with everybody out there. They just caught it on camera at that specific moment in time.

“You know there, was no time assessed, there was nothing that occurred and I played under the rules. To be called out like that was kind of weird, but it is what it is and I take it and I understand it.”

The new plan will give officials the power to impose stroke penalties on players that incur two bad times in a tournament, rather than a single round, though players can call for a "time extension" for any stroke once in a round.

"Having the, 'Hey, can I get 40 more seconds' because this is a weird shot, the wind came up, or something happened, I think that's great,” said 'Mad Scientist’ DeChambeau, who has bulked up by 30 lbs over the winter to a long-hitting 225 lbs.

"I think what they did there is awesome."

Bryson DeChambeau © Darren Carroll/PGA of America

Given how much he appears on TV and his less than speedy pace of play, DeChambeau will be under serious scrutiny this week but he’s hoping to make headlines for his long hitting having piled on two stone thanks to gym work and increased calorie intake.

“So I started out right after Shriners at 208 (pounds), and as I sit right here right now, I'm 225 pounds. Last year, I was 195 pounds at the end of the Hero World Challenge.

”I felt brittle. I felt like a gust of wind could push me over if I wasn't careful. I'm not super light at 195, right, but I still didn't feel like I was solid.

“I just made it a goal of mine this year after I figured out my -- some of the stuff in my golf swing that wasn't going right at Shriners, after I figured that out, I said, okay, now I feel like I have good control of my game and I feel like I can add mass and size and strength and speed to those principles, and so it was kind of a test for me. It wasn't that I was bored or anything. It was just I wanted to see if I could do it, and quite honestly, it's been a massive benefit.

“And it's made me excited for the game again because I get to go back out and play a game that is completely different than what I knew it to be. Two years ago, I was hitting driver, 5-iron, driver almost 4-iron into 16. But yesterday, I hit driver -- I could have hit 9-iron into it but I hit a chip 8-iron into that hole and it was the same into the wind, 10, 15 miles an hour, I flew a driver 315 yards into a 15-mile-an-hour wind. I've never been able to do that before.

“So this transformation, I've literally been working out twice a day. At least after Shriners, I pretty much worked out twice a day for a good month and a half, month, somewhere around there. I just kept going to the gym, and luckily I have a gym at home, so I just go in there probably for 30 minutes and then I go back out and then I go back in for another 30 minutes and accumulated like about 3 1/2 hours of working out a day. It was a lot. It was ridiculous. But I said I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it right.

“It was funny, when I got to Australia to The Presidents Cup, I ate about 6,000 calories. It was a ridiculous amount of food, just because I felt like I needed it to sustain that amount of weight and with travel, I didn't really have the food I wanted on the plane. Just needed to eat, eat, eat, eat, and just kind of maintained that since.

“But it's been a long, tough process. I have a lot of days where I'm lying, I just don't want even to get up out of bed and then I go work out and swing it really fast and then go work out.

“The thing is, people normally say, well, you're going to get injured doing this; you're going to get hurt doing this. And yeah, there are going to be some things that pop up. But I'm luckily to know a guy like Greg Roskopf, MAT, and any time that something has occurred, I've been able to get fixed immediately.

“I hurt myself doing a back extension there probably two, three weeks before the Hero, and within the next three, four days, I was swinging it 185 ball speed, and that was after pretty much throwing out my back. So what he's able to is incredible.”