Monday, August 15, 2011
Associated Press
JOHNS CREEK, Ga.
Keegan Bradley was pretty impressive at the PGA Championship with his resiliency and his really long belly putter.
That’s right, a belly putter. This 25-year-old used a club typically thought to be the last resort of graying golfers with creaky backs to pull off a shocking victory.
The PGA Tour rookie became the first to win a major tournament with a long putter, rallying to capture the PGA Championship in a three-hole playoff with Jason Dufner on Sunday.
He turned in amazing performances with the club on the greens at Atlanta Athletic Club.
“Personally, I think it’s an easier way to putt,” he said. “Especially when there’s some nerves.”
Oh, there were plenty of those during the final round — except maybe for Bradley.
“This guy is the guttiest player I’ve ever worked for, ever,” caddie Steve Hale said. “This kid, there’s no quit in him.”
He banged in a hard-charging 35-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th that brought him to 8-under par, then delicately lagged a putt on the 18th hole that led to a tap-in par and kept his spot in the playoff.
“It wasn’t easy to two-putt from that spot,” said Scott Verplank, Bradley’s final-round partner.
Bradley doesn’t know what the fuss is about.
He’s used the belly putter for 21/2 years and said it was routine on the Nationwide Tour to be “in a group with three guys that had unconventional putters. It happened all the time.”
Just not in the majors. It’s hard to forget the iconic shots of the Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus, bent way over as he struck his putts.
Bradley, a skinny, 6-foot-3 golfer from St. John’s, didn’t see why he couldn’t try the belly putter, especially when it felt so right.
“For a guy that’s 40 years old and has been playing with a short putter for 35 years, they grab that thing and it’s a bizarre feeling,” Bradley said. “For me, it was really easy. It just clicked right away.”
That was apparent at the PGA. Hale saw it coming throughout the round as Bradley’s deft touch got him out of trouble again and again. “You kind of had a sense that something like this was going to happen,” the caddie said.
Maybe, but it had never happened before.
Five shots behind with three holes to play in the PGA Championship, Bradley made back-to-back birdies to begin his rally.
Equally stunning was the collapse from Dufner, who was flawless on the home stretch until Sunday, when he made three straight bogeys with the Wanamaker Trophy on the line.
Bradley won a three-hole playoff, making him only the third player in at least 100 years to win a major in his first try.
Dufner, now winless in 148 starts on the PGA Tour, stooped over on the 18th fairway in the playoff before hitting his final shot, knowing that he had thrown away his best chance at finally winning — in a major, no less.
And so ended the final major of the year — a guy in a red shirt pumping his fists along the back nine of Atlanta Athletic Club, providing excitement that the PGA Championship had been missing until the final hour.
Until then, this major had been remembered for Tiger Woods missing the cut by six shots and looking lost as ever, and for U.S. Open champion Rory McIlroy hitting a tree root in the opening round and playing the rest of the week with his right wrist heavily taped.
Bradley, best known until now as the nephew of LPGA great Pat Bradley, was No. 108 in the world after having won the Byron Nelson Championship earlier this year in a sudden-death playoff, again after the leaders had faded on the closing holes.
This makes seven straight majors won by players who had never before captured a Grand Slam event, the longest streak in history.
“He’s got a good pedigree with Pat Bradley in the family,” Dufner said. “I’m sure he’s picked up a few things from her about winning, attitude and golf in general. He’s probably got a pretty strong future out here.”
Bradley now moves to No. 29 in the world, and ends the longest American drought in the majors at six tournaments. Phil Mickelson had been the last American at the 2010 Masters, and perhaps that’s only fitting.
Mickelson has been playing money games during practice rounds at the big tournaments with Bradley, wanting him to be prepared to play for something more prestigious than cash. The kid must have taken the lessons to heart.
He never gave up when he had every reason to do just that.