Jason

Kokrak

Kokrak turned professional in 2008 and enjoyed early success playing in golf’s development levels.

His earnings from 16 events on the 2011 Nationwide Tour (now known as the Korn Ferry) saw him promoted to the PGA Tour the following season.

Kokrak soon hit the headlines in 2013 by making a hole-in-one on a par 4 at Seaside, Georgia, with an almighty 409-yard drive on the fifth hole during the McGladrey Classic.

After several near misses in and around the top four of the leaderboards, he eventually landed his first big prize with the 2020 CJ Cup at Shadow Creek.

Having broken into the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking, success at Shadow Creek sparked a run of three tournament wins over 13 months with Kokrak adding victories at the 2021 Charles Schwab Challenge and the 2021 Houston Open.

As he prepared for a new adventure with LIV Golf, Kokrak was able to look back on a hugely successful 13-year career on the PGA Tour.

In 2021 Kokrak became an international ambassador for Golf Saudi. Although he was interested to hear about the ambitious plans for LIV Golf, he turned down some early advances until he received a call from long-term friend Brooks Koepka.

“Brooks and I had been close for quite a few years before LIV Golf,” he told Fairway To Heaven.

“We both saw the first tournament at Centurion and he called me and said: ‘Hey, we’re both playing the U.S. Open next week, we gotta talk.’

“He said ‘If I can get where I need to be and I’m comfortable, would you want to be on my team moving forward?’

“I said if you’re in, I’m in.”

Kokrak signed up for the LIV Golf Invitational series in July 2022 while ranked 36th in the world. He made his debut for Smash GC under captain Koepka in the fledgling event’s third tournament in Portland and has been a regular member of the team ever since.

Kokrak turned in his best individual performance in LIV Golf in the penultimate round of last season, finishing third at Greenbrier to help Smash take the weekend’s team title.

Jason Kokrak is quick to praise his long-term caddie David ‘D-Rob’ Robinson for helping him to improve his accuracy on the greens.

“We’ve been together for about seven years now,” Kokrak told Fairway To Heaven.

“Everybody needs to get themselves a D-Rob. He has a wealth of knowledge, loves the game of golf and is an incredible player in his own right.

“The guy is unbelievable on the greens. I was never a good Bermuda green reader, I grew up with Bentgrass greens so I can see that style much better.

“He’s very visual and picks up on things very quickly. How you’re putting on a certain day or paying attention to other people’s putts, how they’re breaking, how they’re slowing down.

“It’s pretty impressive just to listen to him.”

It comes as a surprise to golf fans to discover Kokrak was born in North Bay, Canada, especially as his father ran a dry-cleaning business in Iowa.

“My mum just happened to be up in Canada visiting family and I was born up there,” Kokrak says.

“Everybody’s like ‘wait, are you Canadian’ and I say ‘well yes, I’m Canadian, my mum’s Canadian and I’m happy to be born there’, but I’m a US citizen now and have been since I was 12 or 13 years old.

“Everything that I know is in northeastern Iowa, almost where I live now.”

Jason Kokrak will celebrate his 40th birthday in May 2025 with wife Stephanie and their two sons.

Stephanie works as an assistant teacher having graduated from the University of Akron, Ohio, with a degree in Early Childhood Development.

The couple spent their early married life living in Charlotte, North Carolina, but moved back to Hudson, Ohio in 2019.

For those who want to know how to pronounce the Kokrak family name, it’s with hard K’s and a soft O, to give you ‘Koe-crack’.