Keegan Bradley may be the U.S. Ryder Cup captain, but the 38-year-old golfer’s career isn’t over. He confidently still believes he’s in his prime and still good enough to not just manage a cup team but play for one, too.
At least for a week, nobody can argue with him.
Bradley faced down Adam Scott and company in a Sunday duel to win the BMW Championship by one shot on Sunday in Denver for potentially his biggest win in six years. The FedEx Cup playoff event win is Bradley’s seventh career PGA Tour victory.
One week ago, Bradley needed an unexpected call from Billy Horschel to inform him he’d even be playing in the BMW. He had a tough week in Memphis and fell so far in the FedEx Cup standings that he barely made the top-50 cut line to qualify for the penultimate event of the playoffs. Bradley hadn’t earned a top-20 finish since May and wasn’t playing anywhere near his 2023 campaign that nearly got Bradley a Ryder Cup spot. Any notion of a run into the Tour Championship (top 30 qualify) seemed like a long shot.
Now, Bradley enters the Tour Championship fourth in the standings and will begin the championship at 6 under par in its starting stroke format, four back of No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.
His postseason turned around with an emotional, bogey-free 66 on Thursday that added new energy to the passionate New Englander. He quickly became the crowd favorite — other than Colorado native Wyndham Clark, who finished 13th — with the Denver galleries showering him with “USA” chants.
“To be named Ryder Cup captain and still be a full-time player is strange,” Bradley admitted Saturday. “I don’t know if anyone knows how to handle this situation. So I’m doing the best I can. The only thing I can keep doing is play my best golf and maybe play my way onto some of these teams.”
So Bradley entered the final round with a one-shot lead over Scott and just two ahead of 24-year-old rising star Ludvig Åberg.
Bradley quickly jumped to 13 under with an opening birdie before grinding all day with 13 straight pars. He was steady, hitting fairways and greens, but neither he nor Scott could quite hit the crucial putts.
Yet Scott faded down the stretch, bogeying four of six holes on the back nine to slowly fade out behind Bradley, Åberg and Sam Burns. Burns shot a wild Sunday 65 to take the clubhouse lead at 11 under par, meaning Bradley simply needed to maintain to stay in control.
Bradley did bogey 15 to fall to 12 under before an incredible iron shot into the par 5 No. 17 to set up an eagle putt and settle for birdie and regain a two-shot lead. That was all he needed to hold off Burns, Åberg and Scott, who all finished tied for second.
Bradley winning twice in 2023 only to still miss the Ryder Cup team became a huge storyline, only amplified by Netflix cameras showing his raw pain to the world on its “Full Swing” docuseries. There are six automatic qualifying spots for the Ryder Cup and six captain’s picks. He said that day he accepted he’d need to qualify via points if he ever wanted to play in another cup.
So when Bradley was named as Team USA’s surprising new captain, he was asked if he’d ever pick himself.
“I want to play on the team,” Bradley said in July. “One thing that is important to me is I want to play on the team. I feel like I’m still in the prime of my career and can make this team.
“I will either make the team on points … I’m not going to pick myself.”
No, Keegan Bradley is not likely to be one of the six best American golfers to automatically qualify. But he’s not done trying.
With the final 30 for the Tour Championship settled, here’s a look at the starting strokes for the top guys in the final event. It can be confusing, but to find a middle ground between the FedEx Cup being both a season-long event and one that ends with a single tournament, players begin the Tour Championship with a certain amount of strokes given to them based on their place in the standings.
Then Nos. 6-10 begin at 4 under. Nos. 11-15 are at 3 under; Nos. 16-20 at 2 under; No. 21-25 at 1 under and No. 26-30 at even par. All 30 then play a normal 72-hole tournament from there, and the final leaderboard goes down as the final standings of record for the season.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.