CASTLE ROCK — After being the last man to qualify for the BMW Championship with a No. 50 FedExCup ranking, bubble boy Keegan Bradley played like he had a new lease on life on Thursday.
The 38-year-old Vermont native carded a 66 to open the tournament at Castle Pines Golf Club, putting him in first place after one round of play. Should he stay on that pace — he’s currently projected to leap up to fourth in the rankings — he’ll be in the mix to win the BMW and advance with the top 30 players to next weekend’s Tour Championship.
After enduring “one of the toughest afternoons of my PGA Tour career” last Sunday as he anxiously waited to see if he’d make the top 50 and get a spot in the BMW, Bradley is playing with house money.
“It’s such a relief to be here,” Bradley said. “I just felt a lot calmer today. But I played really, really well.”
Bradley was bogey-free while notching six birdies. He started fast, with birdies on the par-5 first hole, par-4 second and the par-5 eighth. That last birdie featured an impressive chip out from the bunker on his third shot that stopped two feet from the hole.
That consistency carried over to the back nine, where he birdied the par-4 13th and par-5 14th and capped his round with a birdie (and fist pump after his ball sank on a tricky downhill, 10-foot putt) on the 18th.
En route to 6 under par, the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup captain hit 16 of 18 greens and 12 of 14 fairways. He also made a key par putt on the par-3 seventh hole to maintain the momentum of the lowest opening round of his year. This isn’t Bradley’s first time out front in the BMW Championship: He won the 2018 tournament in a playoff and also held an 18-hole lead at the 2022 rendition, only to collapse during the weekend to finish tied for 58th.
“The birdie on 18 was nice,” Bradley said. “I was pumped about that because I had a really tough putt. But on the seventh hole I ran a putt by about 10 feet and made it for par. Those are always the big ones.”
Another longtime PGA Tour mainstay also made noise on Thursday to put himself near the top of the leaderboard.
Adam Scott, one of two golfers this weekend to have also competed in The International at Castle Pines, carded a 4-under 68.
The 44-year-old Australian made his PGA Tour debut in America at Castle Pines in 2000 and missed the cut. But the veteran showed poise on Thursday with five birdies and shook off an early bogey on the par-4 third. He entered the tournament 41st in the rankings but is now projected to shoot up to 22nd, which would qualify him for next weekend.
“I don’t think I played particularly well 24 years ago here. … I remember being around all the players that I’d looked up to my entire childhood and feeling not really prepared for it, to be perfectly honest,” Scott recalled. “It was a bit overwhelming, and I think my scores probably reflected that.
“… To think about however many events it is that I’ve played now and that I’ve been successful out here (on the PGA Tour) for a long time, it was inspiring at the time, and it’s fun to come back to where it all began.”
Scott also had the second-longest drive of the day — a 426-yard bomb that landed in the fairway on the difficult par-4 10th, where he ended up making birdie via a 24-foot putt.
“My highlight was hitting it (about) 430 down the 10th, by the way,” Scott quipped with a smile. “Forget the iron play.”
As Scott reminisced on his full-circle journey back to Castle Rock, there was also an air of nostalgia over the club overall as the PGA Tour returned to Colorado for the first time in 11 years and to Castle Pines for the first time in 18.
Golf legend and all-time major wins leader Jack Nicklaus got the action going in the morning as the honorary chairman. His presence on the first tee box was underscored by a flyover from four F-16 fighter jets.
The club’s iconic hummingbirds could be spotted fluttering about, especially around flower beds across the course. Several of the most notable twosomes, such as Scottie Scheffler with Xander Schauffele and Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy with local favorite Wyndham Clark, had a substantial gallery following them from hole to hole. NBA and Olympic champion Derrick White, whom Clark grew up competing against in various sports in Douglas County, walked the course with Clark on Thursday as one of his biggest fans.
There were old fans and young, some of the kids skipping school to see the tournament. One elementary-aged boy stood against the ropes on the eighth hole, consistently pantomiming his golf swing after watching several pairings bomb drives.
And as the throngs of fans trekked around the hilly course that measures a PGA Tour distance record 8,130 yards — with about 8.5 miles of walking from the first tee to the last — there were lots of strained faces and catch-your-breath breaks under shaded trees.
The culmination of those vibes led Swedish golfer Alex Norén, who finished 4 under, to declare “It looks like a major out there, and the crowd is great.”
All the while, the world’s best golfers continued to acclimate to the elevation after getting to test the course via practice rounds earlier in the week. Norén said that accounting for the ball flying 10% farther than at sea level worked for his game.
“I played off 10% (deduction), and I thought that was pretty accurate all day,” Norén said.
An afternoon thunderstorm rolled in at about 3:30 p.m. and sent spectators rushing for cover, creating long lines for the shuttles back to the parking lots. Play was suspended for three hours and 15 minutes before resuming. The rain will surely soften up the course for Friday, making Thursday’s fast and dry greens easier on Day 2.
With Bradley in the lead, Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama is in second at 5 under. Matsuyama, No. 3 in the rankings, worked around a bogey on the 10th with six birdies, including three in the first four holes. He is coming off a win in the FedEx St. Jude Championship last weekend.
Scott, Norén, South Korea’s Sungjae Im and Canada’s Corey Conners are tied for third at 3 under as the top six players on the leaderboard hail from six different countries. Schauffele (No. 2 in the rankings coming into Thursday) is tied for seventh at 3 under and McIlroy (No. 5) is tied for 10th at 2 under after finishing with a bogey. Scheffler finished the day 1-under, tied for 15th.
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Originally Published: August 22, 2024 at 8:17 p.m.
