Wearing the home red and white of his beloved Boston Red Sox, New England golfer Keegan Bradley joined the Sox, Bruins, Celtics, and Patriots in the world champions’ winner’s circle after Sunday’s decisive playoff victory at the PGA Championship.
The Woodstock, Vt., native put the finishing touches on his first major — and second title of his rookie season — with stellar shot-making in the three-hole playoff. Like the 2004 Sox, who battled back from a 3-0 playoff deficit to the New York Yankees and went on to capture their first World Series championship in 86 years, Bradley came back from being five down with three to play after a triple-bogey on the par-3 15th.
“I just kept telling myself, don’t let that hole define this whole tournament,” Bradley told reporters of the 15th, where his chip shot from a bad lie took off across the green, jumped the wall, and splashed into the water. “I had played so well and I gutted out rounds and I just didn’t want to be remembered as the guy who tripled that hole….I just kept telling myself to just pretend like nothing happened and go out there and hit the fairway.”
Hit the short stuff he did, with what Bradley described as his best shot of the week. He went on to birdie that and the next hole, helped by a quick 40-footer with his belly putter on 17, to play himself into extra innings with a closing-round 68.
A birdie-par-par finish in overtime started the cowbells ringing throughout New England. Indeed, the 25-year-old who grew up skiing the mountains of Vermont, proudly displayed his colors after tapping in for the win on his 75th green.
“I take tremendous pride in being from New England. It’s one of the things that defines me,” Bradley said in a Sunday night press conference from Atlanta Athletic Club. “It’s a tremendous pride for me to be from Vermont and to be a PGA Tour champion and to be able to say that there has not been a lot of us out here. But New England is a huge part of my personality and the way I even play golf.”
Bradley joined his LPGA Tour Hall of Fame aunt Pat Bradley — whose mother famously clanged cowbells in Pat’s hometown of Westford, Mass., each time her daughter won a tourney — as a major champion. While the golfer looked forward to bringing his golf game home to Boston’s Deutsche Bank Championship next month in the second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, the Boston sports fan also had is sights set on hitting the links with an icon of the New England sports scene.
“I’d love to play with [Patriots QB] Tom Brady,” Bradley said. “Yeah, he’s one of my idols. That would be a dream come true. I hope that happens for sure.”
(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. Check her out on the Waggle Room, Boston Golf Examiner, National Golf Examiner, and GottaGoGolf websites. You may also follow Kay on Twitter @golfexaminer.)
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