Imago
Credit: IMAGO
Imago
Credit: IMAGO
Keegan Bradley has won eight PGA Tour titles and captured the 2011 PGA Championship. He is very familiar with the pressure and has dealt with it that would make most golfers crumble. Yet the 39-year-old recently admitted that his most nerve-racking moments on a golf course don’t come when he’s fighting for victory himself. Instead, they come right after his opponent makes a mistake.
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During a podcast with SmartLess Media, when the host asked whether tour golfers hope their opponents fail, Keegan Bradley talked about the mental side of competition.
“The best outcome would be the first one, where you just play better than them. But certainly, I mean, you don’t want the worst thing you can do in golf — the golf gods — is root for somebody to do something bad because that will come back around,” he said. “I’m convinced of it. So, you know, you want to go out there and not a better feeling in the world for an athlete, I think, when you go head-to-head with another great player and beat them and on.”
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The conversation got interesting when he was asked about a specific situation at the Island Green at TPC Sawgrass. They wanted to know what happens when his opponent hits the ball into the water, and they just need to get through the hole. Bradley’s response was unlike those in typical sports discussions.
“I will say, when I’ve been in competition and like in a playoff to win a tournament, and somebody does something like that, and you know all you have to do is just hit it anywhere on the green, that’s the most nervous I’ve ever been playing golf,” he said. “I’ve had it happen a few times where I’ve been like, ‘All right, he’s in the water. All I got to do is just like survive here.’ And that’s when you get crazy nervous. So, there’s two sides of that.”
The captain’s words make sense, though. Keegan Bradley has expressed in the past that losing the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in September was one of the worst experiences of his life and that he may never fully recover from it. Team USA lost to Europe 15-13 after trailing 11.5-4.5 going into Sunday. He took full responsibility for the loss, which has been very heavy on him.
But around Thanksgiving, he found redemption in the Skins Games, which was making a comeback after 17 years.
Keegan Bradley’s redemption at the Panther National
It happened exactly two months after the heartbreaking Ryder Cup loss that Keegan Bradley took over on November 28, winning 11 skins for $2.1 million. The rules were simple but strict: if you won a hole, you got the money; if you tied, the money went back into the pot, making the stakes even higher.
Bradley’s first big win came on the fifth hole, after none of his opponents had won the first four holes. That one putt was worth five skins and $375,000. But the 13th hole was the most important day of his life. Bradley made a 7-foot putt and won $900,000 in one shot, with three holes of carryover money in play. Well, he was quite happy after the game.
He expressed what everyone was thinking as he stood over that putt on the Amazon Prime Video broadcast: “Oh, man, that felt good. I need all the revenge I can get on these guys.”
The 11 skins made Keegan Bradley the first player to reach double digits since Fred Funk in 2005. Tommy Fleetwood finished second with $1.7 million after winning the final hole worth $1.125 million, while Shane Lowry collected $200,000 for one skin. Xander Schauffele left empty-handed. Two of his opponents, Fleetwood and Lowry, wore European colors at Bethpage Black. Winning against them didn’t take away the pain from September, but it did help.
Written by
Edited by
Deepali Verma