In the early 1990s, the dominant college basketball team was the UNLV Runnin” Rebels coached by Jerry Tarkanian and featuring Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, Greg Anthony and Anderson Hunt. UNLV won the national title in 1990, but their perfect 1991 campaign came up short in the NCAA semifinals where they were upset by Duke.
John Wooden, the legendary UCLA coach who won 10 NCAA titles in 12 years and seven in a row from 1967 through 1973, was asked to comment following the conclusion of UNLV”s shocking loss to Duke. I”ll always remember what the glib Wooden said that evening. He stated, “Lots of teams have won one championship in a row.”
That remark by the Wizard of Westwood brings us full circle to the world of men”s professional golf where four men have won one major in a row in 2011. In a season that I long ago contended was the year of the journeyman, 25-year-old PGA Tour rookie Keegan Bradley won the PGA Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club in a three-hole aggregate playoff over journeyman Jason Duffner. In most other years, this would be truly earth shaking, akin to Rich Beem beating Tiger Woods by one stroke to capture the PGA at Hazeltine in 2002. However, in 2011, Bradley”s win makes perfect sense alongside fellow grand slammers Charl Schwartzel, Rory McIlroy and Darren Clarke.
While I cringe at the thought of 24-handicappers taking to Atlanta Athletic Club this week to play casual or business golf, losing 15 golf balls in the water and posting scores in the 120 range, the AAC did provide the season”s last major with tons of drama. It wasn”t all that surprising that Jason Duffner bogeyed three of the last four holes to lose his lead. However, it was most surprising to see a rookie go triple bogey-birdie-birdie-par over the same four holes to force his way into a playoff that he would inevitably win.
Part of the Keegan Bradley story makes perfect sense. His dad is a PGA professional who is currently the club pro in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. His aunt is Pat Bradley, the LPGA Hall of Famer with six major titles and 31 LPGA wins to her credit. But after that, little else fits the profile of a major golf champion.
Keegan Bradley was born in Vermont and spent his formative years in New England. He was All-State as a ski racer. He did prefer the links to the slopes and he was the Massachusetts high school golf champion during his senior year. Kids like Bradley who grow up in the Rust Belt are usually limited in their college options. He played collegiate golf for St. John”s of New York, a Big East school better know for its hoops team than its golf team. Nonetheless, Bradley did win nine college tourneys during his four years at St. John”s. He graduated with his degree in 2008, turned professional that summer, and headed out for seasoning on the AA-level Hooters Tour.
Bradley played in five Hooters tournaments that partial year and won the 2008 Southern Dunes Open. He played the Hooters Tour through 2009 and won the Texas Horning Open. He went to PGA Tour Q School that autumn, got through all three stages, missed getting his tour card by two strokes, and found himself relegated to the AAA-level Nationwide Tour for 2010.
His rookie Nationwide year was a big success. A late-season spurt of top-five finishes put him in 14th place on the money list, good enough to graduate to the PGA Tour for the 2011 campaign. Early season successes, including a seventh-place finish at the Bob Hope, a 15th-place tie at Pebble Beach, and a top-nine finish at the Texas Open set Bradley up for his breakthrough moment at the Byron Nelson in mid-May. Under U.S. Open-like conditions, Keegan shot 66-71-72-68 for a 3-under-par 277 total and subsequent victory in a one-hole playoff over Ryan Palmer. Bradley was 24 years old, had a tour win and exempt status through 2013, and had invites into the World Golf Championship, the PGA, and next year”s Masters.
Bradley flamed out at his first World Golf event, contested two weeks ago at Firestone in Akron. Leading with just nine holes to go, Bradley carded a 6-over-par 41 on the final nine, backpedaled all the way to 15th place, and allowed Adam Scott”s caddie, Steve Williams, to experience “the greatest week of my life.”
Last week”s victory at the PGA Championship, the first major Keegan had ever participated in, put him in select company, joining 1913 U.S. Open champ Francis Ouimet and 2003 British Open winner Ben Curtis, both of whom won in their first attempt at a grand slam title. Pretty heady stuff for a kid from Vermont, a college golfer from a basketball conference, a tour rookie who turned 25 years old on June 7, and a pro golfer who had thrown away the biggest tournament of his life just seven days prior.
All the questions that were going to be answered at the conclusion of the major championship season have led to a whole lot more queries. Is it possible that Keegan Bradley is not only the PGA Tour”s rookie of the year but also its player of the year? Is Keegan America”s great new golfing hope, putting him ahead of Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler, Anthony Kim and the rest? And most importantly, in a question that can only be answered sometime next month by President”s Cup captain Freddie Couples, is it possible that the USA squad would be better served by selecting Keegan Bradley as a captain”s pick instead of Tiger Woods?
The 2011 PGA Championship is now in the record books. The tournament featured a “who”s he?” leaderboard with top-10 finishes from Anders Hansen, Robert Karlsson, Scott Verplank, Kevin Na and D.A. Points. Only David Toms, the PGA champ from 10 years ago at Atlanta Athletic, was the sole past major winner among those in this year”s top finishers. Keegan Bradley took advantage of the Tiger-Phil-Vijay-Ernie power void to win his first major title, much the same way Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen, Martin Kaymer, Charl Schwartzel and Darren Clarke have done during the past two seasons.
It”s a new world out there on the center stage of men”s professional golf.
