When Mark Bradley hitched a ride to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 1973, he had a career plan as a fly-fishing guide.
But life is unpredictable.
He would become a professional golfer, relocate to Vermont, and above all have a son. Keegan Bradley and Mark used to play a lot of golf together, especially a game called Rider Cup/Walker Cup, in which young Keegan could ride in a cart if he hit a nice shot and had to walk if he missed.
“He would be running behind the cart,” Mark Bradley said at the rollicking BMW Championship at Castle Pines Golf Club, “and he’d be yelling, ‘Dad! Dad! But that was a Rider Cup!’”
Keegan Bradley, who will be a captain’s assistant at the Presidents Cup, Sept. 26-29, and the U.S. Ryder Cup captain next year, was deserving of all the cups, including the trophy, as he shot a final-round, even-par 72 to win the BMW Championship by a shot at Castle Pines on Sunday.
It was his seventh PGA TOUR title and moved him from 50th in the FedExCup – the last man into the field – to No. 4, as players prepare for the TOUR Championship to decide it all.
“I’m in a bit of a state of shock because there was a time a week ago about this time that I didn’t think I was going to be coming here,” said Bradley, who made 14 pars, two birdies and two bogeys to convert his 54-hole lead into a victory. “I had to have a lot of magical things happen for me to just play in this tournament, and when I got here, I was so grateful just to be here. I played with a real sense of calm all week, which is not the norm for me.”
How did this happen? How did Bradley, who made it into the BMW Championship field by just 17 FedExCup points over Tom Kim, go out and win the tournament ?
If there was a shot to remember, said Bradley’s caddie, Scott Vail, it was Bradley’s 5-iron into the par-5 17th hole. He had faced the same shot the day before but come up short. This time, the ball soared through the thin Colorado air so majestically, settling 16 feet from the pin for an easy two-putt birdie. “The best shot I’ve ever seen,” Vail called it. He even wrote it down that way in the yardage book, in all caps with three exclamation points.
He got no argument from his boss.
“That 5-iron was as pure of a golf shot as I’ve ever hit,” Bradley said. “… I was aiming at the tongue of the bunker, and I hit it right there. It’s one of those moments when you realize you can hit these shots in contention when it matters most, and to be able to pull that shot off – I mean, for me that was the shot of the tournament and a shot that I’ll remember forever.”
The birdie gave Bradley a two-shot lead going to the last, and he would need it, three-putting for bogey from just off the left of the green before thrusting his arms in the air as the crowd roared.
All week, players struggled to figure out yardages at altitude, but Bradley excelled here.
“We’re really good at elevation change,” said caddie Vail. “We’ve had all those numbers really dialed in. It just felt right, like it was going to be a solid week the way he was hitting it. You’ve got to eliminate the variables, which means being a good ball-striker. If you hit it thin, elevation isn’t going to help much. He hits it on the screws; we’ve got a formula.”
It didn’t hurt that Bradley is not just of the Northeast (Vermont and Hopkinton, Massachusetts), New York (St. John’s University in New York), and South Florida (he lives in TOUR pro-heavy Jupiter). He’s also of the Mountain West. Mark Bradley, who had never been on site to witness one of his son’s victories until Sunday, would move back to Jackson Hole again and continue his teaching career as Director of Instruction of Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club.
Keegan would visit Colorado’s neighbor to the north whenever he could.
“When I went to St. John’s, my college years, I would drive out to Wyoming and I would work at the golf course and I would play in the Wyoming State Amateur and the Wyoming Open,” he said. “I was out there for three summers, I believe. I would get done with school in Queens, get in my Ford Focus and drive for three days to Jackson and work all summer, play golf and fish and play in those local tournaments, and it was great.”
So great, in fact, that Keegan Bradley won the 2005 Wyoming State Golf Association Amateur and the 2006 WSGA Match Play Championship and is in the WSGA Hall of Fame.
Those victories would translate into success on TOUR, although not without some struggle and strife. Thrown by the ban on anchored putting, Bradley would endure a six-year win drought. It’s why he makes sure to celebrate his victories, he said Sunday.
“I always try to take a second to really enjoy it, not underreact to a situation like that,” he said.
His latest victory seemed to be in doubt when he was tied at the top with playing partner Adam Scott, who eagled the par-5 opening hole and went out in 2-under 34 to Bradley’s 35.
Alas, Scott (72, T2) bogeyed four of the first six holes on the back nine, leaving Sam Burns (65, T2) as the most serious threat after Bradley bogeyed the par-4 15th hole. It took his birdie at the par-5 17th, and that 5-iron second shot that Bradley will never forget, to restore order and a two-shot lead going into 18. He could breathe again, even in the thin air.
Although his approach missed left and short, rolling back off the green, his ensuing three-putt from the front fringe didn’t matter. He tapped in before hugging Vail and then his beaming father.
You’d have to say Mark Bradley’s “Rider Cup/Walker Cup” games paid off.
As for those other cups, as in Presidents and Ryder, who knows? Bradley, 38, would need to be one of the six captain’s picks, to be announced after the TOUR Championship, to make the playing roster for the Presidents Cup next month.
Then there’s the question of next year’s Ryder Cup at New York’s Bethpage Black. Bradley has gone on record saying he won’t pick himself, but he’s got plenty of time to make it on points.
“I still feel like I’m in the prime of my career,” he said.
So good from tee to green as to negate a balky putter (-1.693 Strokes Gained), Bradley backed up that claim with his clubs. He thought he had missed out on the BMW Championship. He thought the TOUR Championship in Atlanta wasn’t even worth thinking about. Now he’ll go to East Lake just four strokes behind No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.
Walking or riding, player or captain, Northeast or Mountain West, Keegan Bradley’s life is changing fast.
