Keegan Bradley has come a long way to get back to being PGA Tour winner.
Keegan Bradley’s game collapsed after the anchored putting ban. On Monday at the BMW Championship, however, he got back into the winner’s circle for the first time in six years.
Keegan Bradley’s career changed forever on Nov. 28, 2012.
It was that morning when the United States Golf Association announced the ban of anchored putters, to take effect at the start of 2016. Suddenly the putting method that Bradley had used throughout his career, that had carried him to become a PGA Tour winner and a major champion, was no longer allowed.
Bradley’s adjustment to the ban didn’t go well. In 2012, the year he won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, he ranked 35th on tour in strokes gained: putting. The next year, still using the belly putter, he was 49th.
In 2016, after the ban took effect, the bottom fell out. Bradley dropped to 183rd in putting, third worst on the PGA Tour. This year he’s hardly better, ranking 174th. What he now does have in 2018 that he didn’t have in the previous six years, however, is a victory.
On Monday, more than six years after his last win, Bradley defeated Justin Rose on the first hole of a sudden death playoff to win the BMW Championship.
Beginning the delayed final round three shots behind Rose at soggy Aronimink Golf Club, it was Bradley’s putter that helped erase the deficit. He made 98 feet worth of putts on the front nine to go out in four-under. A 17-footer for birdie at the 14th gave him a share of the lead. At the par-three 17th, another 10-foot birdie putt gave him a one-shot advantage going to the closing hole.
It’s not easy to end a six-year winless drought, though. Bradley’s drive on the 18th went well right into the rough. His second shot flew into the grandstands beside the green. He failed to get up-and-down from there to lose the lead.
Bradley got a chance at redemption when Rose’s 15-foot par putt to win the tournament hit the lip and stayed out. Going back to 18th tee for the start of the playoff, Bradley was able to save par this time while Rose made another bogey. Tapping in the putt that would seal his fourth career title, Bradley thrust his arms into the air as the weight of what he’s gone through these past six years was lifted off his shoulders.
“I felt so calm today,” Bradley said afterwards. “It was really, really kind of strange because I don’t normally look at leaderboards, but I looked all day. I felt so solid. It’s so gratifying to get what comes with hard work. Sometimes you never even get it. So to be back here and win this tournament, it’s just incredible.”
With the win, Bradley jumps from 52nd in the FexEx Cup standings all the way to sixth, qualifying for the Tour Championship at East Lake in two weeks.
Bradley admits the struggles he’s gone through since his last win made him wonder whether he would ever get back to this spot. A two-time Ryder Cup team member who reached as high as 10th in the world rankings, by 2016 Bradley had fallen out of the top 100.
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“A lot has happened to me over these six years,” he said. “The belly putter was a tougher transition than I thought. I kind of fell off the radar there for a little while. It’s tough to go from, you know, being on Ryder Cup teams, being on Presidents Cup teams, to … outside the top 100 in the world. That was difficult.”
When he won the PGA Championship in 2011, Bradley was a 25-year-old making his first start in a major championship and considered a rising star on tour. Now he’s 32 with a wife and young son, Logan, born last November.
To get back to where he once was, Bradley put in the work not knowing if he would ever get back to where he once was. The effort came close to paying off two weeks ago at The Northern Trust, when he was in the last group on Sunday after shooting 62 in the third round. He shot 78 in the final round, however, and fell to 34th.
Undeterred by that disappointment, Bradley finally saw everything come together Monday at Aronimink.
“To put it all together, especially with the putter the way it was this week and the way it’s becoming, is so gratifying. Because for a little while I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get back to this spot,” he said.
“Today I did it.”