CASTLE ROCK — The Captain came up clutch to close out the PGA Tour’s long-awaited return to Colorado.
After entering the final day of the BMW Championship with a one-shot lead, Keegan Bradley played par golf on Sunday at Castle Pines Golf Club to finish 12-under par for the tournament — one stroke better than Sam Burns, Ludvig Åberg and Adam Scott.
The last man to qualify for the tournament at 50th on the FedExCup Playoffs rankings, Bradley rocketed up to No. 4 after becoming the 20th multiple-time winner in the event’s history.
Next up for the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup captain: A chance to win the whole thing at next weekend’s Tour Championship in Atlanta.
“I’ve been in these (nail-biter) situations a lot, and I kept telling myself that,” said Bradley, who also won the BMW in 2018. “There were some guys on the leaderboard that hadn’t done that on the Tour, and I knew that was going to be tough for them.
“… I’ve come from behind and won, I’ve been ahead and won, and I just kept telling myself that I’ve been in these situations before and I’ve won and done it. Today was one of those days.”
The 38-year-old Vermont native played steady on a final tough day at the Castle Rock course. He birdied the opening hole, ripped off 13 straight pars after that, then worked around bogeys on the 15th and 18th with a birdie in-between on the 17th to close out his seventh career victory.
“I still feel like I’m in the prime of my career,” Bradley said. “I feel like there’s a lot of parts to my game that are the best it’s ever been, and I feel like I got years ahead of me — I’ve wanted to make this Ryder Cup team at Bethpage (Black) where I’m the captain. That’s always a goal of mine. I feel like I can still keep playing at a high level for a while.”
It became clear early on that Sunday would be another tough day at Castle Pines, which dried up over the weekend following a Friday littered with high scores following Thursday afternoon’s thunderstorm.
Both Bradley and Scott started in a groove as the final pairing. Scott opened with an eagle on the par-5 first, capped by a 43-foot putt. Bradley also birdied the hole, and the two were off and running.
The gallery, as it did all tournament, consistently cheered on Bradley with chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” as fans acknowledged the importance of his captainship as an active player.
While Bradley settled into a series of pars, Scott missed several birdie putts he’d want back. The 44-year-old Australian missed from nine feet out on the par-4 second, just barely missed a long 31-footer on the par-4 third, and then couldn’t hole a 13-footer on the par-4 fifth.
After a bogey on the par-4 sixth and a birdie on the par-5 eighth canceled each other out, Scott struggled to begin the back nine. He bogeyed three straight holes as Bradley churned out pars, giving the latter control of the leaderboard.
“Ten, 11, 12 kind of blew it for me there,” Scott said. “I was in position with wedges on every hole and made three bogeys. That’s almost unthinkable, really. And I definitely struggled on the greens on the weekend. Just didn’t quite have the confidence in some of those putts.”
Meanwhile, Sam Burns — who teed off nearly two hours before Bradley and Scott — went into the clubhouse as the leader at 11-under after firing a 7-under round. The 28-year-old recorded eight birdies and worked around a bogey on the par-5 14th for the best round of the day.
Burns nearly holed out from the pot bunker in front of the 18th green, but settled for par instead. His polished round featured Sunday’s best driving, as he ranked No. 1 in fairway accuracy by hitting 12 of 14, and elite putting. He was second with 133 feet of putts made.
After Burns’ bunker shot on the 18th rolled just by the hole and stopped 11 inches from the cup, Burns fell face-down on the edge of the sand, tossing his club as his hat came off.
“I knew it was a good line and I knew it was a pretty good weight. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they don’t,” Burns said. “Yeah, (my reaction) was a little dramatic.”
Bradley’s birdie on the par-5 17th gave him a two-stroke lead heading into the final hole. To make four on the 17th, Bradley hit a 232-yard five-iron to set him up for a look at eagle. His caddie, Scott Vail, called it “the best shot I’ve ever seen… right at the flag and it came down like a pitching wedge. It was so soft.”
His golfer agreed, saying the shot under pressure to help close out the tournament was “as pure of a golf shot as I’ve ever hit.” That’s high talk considering Bradley has a major win on his resume: the 2011 PGA Championship during his rookie season.
“It was a little downwind, but on the previous hole I hit 7-iron for 195 adjusted and it just went forever,” Bradley said. “I think I was a little jacked up. So we just decided to rip that 5-iron… 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.”
After Åberg finished with a par and Scott missed a birdie putt on the 18th that would’ve put pressure on Bradley, the captain two-putted from five feet out to secure the win. Then Bradley threw his arms into the air and hugged Vail and his dad, Mark Bradley, the director of instruction at Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis Club in Wyoming. It was the first time Mark had seen his son win in person.
Now, the guy who had his bags packed and a plane ticket booked to return home to Jupiter, Florida, last week — thinking he’d be out of the top 50 — is in position to possibly win the FedExCup Playoffs. He also put himself in the conversation for one of the captain’s picks for the U.S. Presidents Cup team, which is led by Jim Furyk.
“The goal for next week? Win,” Vail said. “Take advantage of it while you’re playing good… it doesn’t happen but six, eight times a year that you’re really on top of your game. Go out and win and get some work done next week.”
Bradley’s bubble boy-to-champion achievement capped the Tour’s triumphant return to Colorado for the first time since 2014 — and pro golf at Castle Pines since The International ended in 2006
The tournament proved the course’s extensive reshaping was effective in keeping some of the world’s best golfers in check.
“We did everything to this golf course (to get it ready for the PGA Tour),” Castle Pines Golf Club president George Solich said. “We largely redesigned five holes on the front and five holes on the back. We rebuilt every green, rebuilt every bunker complex, rebuilt every tee complex. We redid or added all the water features.
“And we added about 650 yards to make it (a PGA Tour record) 8,130. So we were ready. You don’t know until you hit Sunday how it will hold… some people said guys might hit 20-under, but I said no way.”
Solich said earlier this summer, he predicted the BMW Championship winner would be at 15-under.
Bradley’s winning score came in three shots under that, while the four-day scoring average for the field was 71.430, less than a stroke under par. Even the world’s No. 1-ranked golfer, Scottie Scheffler, struggled to 1-over par.
All told, more than 125,000 fans turned out to take it all in, according to Castle Pines officials.
“We have a lot of really strong golf fans in this state and it showed all week,” Solich said. “From Tuesday on, we broke every record for the BMW Championship for attendance. So to say we were a little bit golf-starved is an understatement. Cherry Hills was a wild success, but this is an even greater success.”
For Castle Pines, this year’s BMW Championship passed the litmus test to bring the tournament, or another PGA Event, back in the not-too-distant future.
“We were built for championship golf,” Solich said. “That’s what (late founder) Jack Vickers’ dream was, and he’s looking down on us with a big thumbs up. We’ll have the PGA Tour back — we don’t know in what form or when, but it’s too good a place for golf and too good of a theatre not to.”
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Originally Published: August 25, 2024 at 7:05 p.m.
