Quick look at the BMW Championship

Each week during the fall, PGATOUR.COM will highlight one of the rookies playing on the PGA TOUR during the 2019-20 season. This week: Matthew NeSmith, who’s in this week’s field at this week’s Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. Age: 25 Birthplace: North Augusta, South Carolina Resides: Columbia, South Carolina College: University of South Carolina TOUR card gained by: Finishing 1st in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. TOUR starts/Best finish: 8/missed all eight cuts, but missed by only one shot at A Military Tribute at The Greenbrier. MEET THE ROOKIES: Bo Hoag | Michael Gellerman | Nelson Ledesma Pro highlights: Started Sunday three back but shot 64 to beat Viktor Hovland by one at the Albertsons Boise Open presented by Kraft Nabisco, for his first Korn Ferry Tour title. … Top-10s at Ellie Mae Classic at TPC Stonebrae (led through 36 and 54 holes but finished T8), Nashville Golf Open Benefitting the Snedeker Foundation (T6), and The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at Sandals Emerald Bay (T9). …  Finished runner-up at 2016 Mackenzie Tour PGA TOUR Canada Q School … Shot a bogey-free 6-under 66 in the opening round of the Safeway Open, leaving him just one shot off the 18-hole lead, but shot 77 in Round 2 to miss the cut. Amateur highlights: As a senior at South Carolina, he became first Gamecock to win twice in less than one week (five days), and first to earn PING First Team All-America honors. … Is the school’s all-time leader in top-10 finishes (25) and scoring average (71.65). … As a junior golfer in 2012, won AJGA’s Rolex Tournament of Champions and FootJoy Invitational, the latter event, at Sedgefield Country Club, earning him a start at 2012 Wyndham Championship (MC). Interesting tidbits: Does not look at leaderboards and did not know the 15-footer at the last was for the win in Boise. (He made it.) … Proposed to his wife, Abigail, on the 18th green at Harbour Town Golf Links. … Has volunteered to build bikes for needy families at Christmas. … Has been involved with Curing Kids Cancer, where wife has worked. … Brother is a celebrity photojournalist in New York City.   NeSmith says (after winning Albertsons Boise Open): “It was time to do something. I had kind of been hanging around mini tours for a couple of years and Canada, and I finally got out here. I’ve played solid all year-round. I just never really could figure it out, and then I started playing well at the end of the year and got in the Finals … and then anything can happen.� For more on Matthew NeSmith, click here.

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World No.1 Dustin Johnson defends his crown as the PGA TOUR returns to Austin for its annual bracketology week, as FedExCup titleholder Justin Thomas and two-time Match Play king Jason Day head the challenge from a wealth of marquee names. Day is among five former champions in the field, joined by Rory McIlroy (2015), Matt Kuchar (2013) and Ian Poulter (2010). Jon Rahm, who took Johnson to the 18th hole as a Match Play rookie, is also back for a second bite of the apple. FIELD NOTES: Masters titleholder Sergio Garcia is set for his first start since becoming a father. His opening match comes exactly one week after welcoming daughter Azalea Adele Garcia into the world. … In all, Austin CC greets 59 of the world’s top 64 who qualified in the first pass. … Brooks Koepka continues to rest a wrist injury, while three others among the world’s top 15 opted to join him on the sideline: Justin Rose, Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson. Adam Scott is the other absentee. … Moving into the lineup are Kevin Na, Charles Howell III, Joost Luiten, Keegan Bradley and Luke List. … Adam Hadwin, who skipped last year’s event because it conflicted with his wedding, is one of 14 players set for their WGC Match Play debuts. For James Hahn and Australia’s Cameron Smith, it’s their first WGC start of any kind. … World rankings will determine the 16 top seeds, with blind draws to fill each group from pools of players seeded Nos. 17-32, Nos. 33-48 and the remainder. The draws will be televised Monday night. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 550 points. STORYLINES: Three entrants return to action seeking to win in back-to-back starts: Thomas (Honda Classic), Phil Mickelson (WGC-Mexico) and Paul Casey (Valspar Championship). … Day seeks his third WGC Match Play title in five editions, to go with 2016 in Austin and 2014 in Arizona. He owns a 21-7 record in matches played, but went only six holes last year before exiting to be alongside his mother as she underwent cancer treatment. … Johnson, who made the Match Play his third straight win last year, owns four top-10s since the calendar turned but just one victory. … Garcia and Poulter – both Ryder Cup virtuosos – can surpass Tiger Woods for most career matches if either makes the semifinals. Both have 37 matches on their ledger; Woods has played 43. … In a statistical anomaly, no matches went to extra holes last year. COURSE: Austin Country Club, 7,108 yards, par 71. Nestled next to Lake Austin, Pete Dye’s 1984 design has proven a worthy Match Play host in its two editions. The layout features two distinctly different nines – a front nine on higher ground and typical of the surrounding Texas hill country, followed by a “lowlands� nine alongside Lake Austin that offers a scenic backdrop as matches complete. Austin CC dates back to 1899, believed to be the oldest golf club in Texas, relocating twice before occupying its current site. Austin was the original venue for the Legends of Golf from 1978-94; the city later hosted another PGA TOUR Champions stop from 2003-09. LARGEST MARGIN OF VICTORY: 9 & 8, Tiger Woods def. Stephen Ames (1st round, 2006 at La Costa Resort & Spa). LONGEST MATCH: 26 holes, Mike Weir def. Loren Roberts (1st round, 2003 at La Costa), Scott Verplank def. Lee Westwood (1st round, 2006 at La Costa). LAST YEAR: Johnson became the first man to capture all four World Golf Championships, defeating Rahm 1-up in the final to cap off back-to-back-to-back wins in a six-week stretch. Johnson never fell behind in any match, playing 112 holes on the week, though Rahm pushed him the distance in the final. Facing a 4-down deficit, the Spaniard drove the green at No.13 to start a run of three birdies in a four-hole burst. They matched pars at No.17, and Rahm watched his drive 356-yard 18th run through the green. His delicate chip down the slope checked up short of its target, resulting in par, while Johnson’s chip from just short of the green stopped 30 inches away to seal the victory. HOW TO FOLLOW TELEVISION: Wednesday-Friday, 2-8 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Saturday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (GC), 2-6 p.m. (NBC). Sunday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (GC), 3-7 p.m. (NBC). (Golf Channel / NBC Sports LiveExtra simulcast stream) PGA TOUR LIVE: Wednesday-Friday, 10:15 a.m.-4 p.m. ET (featured groups), 4-8 p.m. (featured holes). RADIO: Wednesday-Friday, 2-8 p.m. ET. Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com).  

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Keegan Bradley isn’t freaking out about the U.S. Open’s return to The Country Club. He’s New England to the bone, but he wants to be chill. Zen. Think Tom Brady inside two minutes. OK, fine, this is the first time the U.S. Open has come to Bradley’s beloved Boston since 1988, when he was 2. And, yes, this is the most significant Beantown golf happening since the ’99 Ryder Cup, which Bradley watched from atop his father’s shoulders. And, sure, his dad Mark Bradley, a PGA professional, once met Boston golf legend Francis Ouimet. Oh, and in Keegan’s home office in Jupiter, Florida, he has a signed boxing glove from Lowell, Massachusetts brawler Micky Ward (played by Mark Wahlberg in “The Fighter”) and a shoe from Celtics legend Paul Pierce. He has the puck he dropped at a Bruins game, the coin he flipped at a Patriots game, the ball he threw at a Red Sox game. Who doesn’t? A U.S. Open in Boston is nothing, even if Bradley did graduate from Hopkinton High School, nearly 33 miles from The Country Club, which, hey, 33 was Larry Bird’s number, and beloved old Red Sox catcher Carton “Pudge” Fisk is the uncle of Bradley’s wife, Jillian, and – Oh, never mind. Bradley is sort of freaking out about this U.S. Open. But he’s trying not to. “It’s big,” he said in a lengthy interview at his house in Jupiter, Florida. “It’s the thing I’m most proud of; when you’re from New England, it becomes who you are. But I’ve sort of had to block this out in my brain and try to minimize it. I knew it was a big deal because no one in my family was talking about it, and then I qualified, and here come the texts. “It’s no secret,” he continued, “that this is going to be a tough week because of how much I want to play well, and when you try too hard to make it happen, it never works out.” The Country Club was, however, the site of the ultimate win for a hometown kid, when Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old amateur who grew up across the street from the course, won the 1913 U.S. Open in a playoff with two of the greatest players of the day. They made a movie about that, too. Bradley knows all about it; he’s been told his dad, Mark, was 12 when he met the great man, who was by then around 65. Like Ouimet, Keegan Bradley has been overlooked. And like Ward, he has been knocked down only to pick himself up off the mat. Into the teeth of the storm Bradley wanted to play for a college golf powerhouse, but it didn’t happen, so he went to St. John’s University in Queens, New York. (He now says it was the best possible place for him.) “It’s tough to get many looks when you come from Massachusetts,” said Jon Curran, Bradley’s friend from Hopkinton High, who played the PGA TOUR and now works in insurance. “Golf in Massachusetts is just not cool, and if you were good at it, it felt like we were super nerds.” Or super rugged; Bradley might have picked a more golf-friendly climate than Woodstock, Vermont (before his dad took a club pro job in Hopkinton), but that, too, was formative. Golf in the snow and sleet? Bring it on. He has become America’s premier bad-weather golfer. At this year’s PLAYERS Championship, in brutal wind and cold, Bradley got the wrong end of the draw and finished fifth. At the rain-plagued Wells Fargo Championship, he tied for second. That finish clinched his spot in this year’s U.S. Open, earning him an exemption via the world ranking that allowed him to skip the uncertainty of Final Qualifying. At the 2011 Bryon Nelson, his first TOUR win, weekend rounds featured winds of 25 mph with gusts hitting 40. He’s made so much hay in bad weather he’s basically human Gore-Tex. “He’s so into his process and practices really, really well, and efficiently, so when things have a chance to go awry, his stuff’s really tight,” Curran said. “It takes a lot more than some rain or cold for stuff to go off kilter, and that’s because of all the work that he puts in.” The most challenging storm for him has been golf’s anchoring ban, which went into effect in 2016. Bradley, who had used a belly-putter, was suddenly adrift. “I think I underestimated the effect of it,” he said. Although he made the 2012 and 2014 U.S. Ryder Cup teams, and the 2013 U.S. Presidents Cup team, Bradley was knocked backward and took up a grim residency outside the top 150 in Strokes Gained: Putting. And the stress of it all crept into other facets of his game. Ah, but this is Bradley we’re talking about. Former ski racer. Overlooked amateur golfer. He likes it hard and rebuilt his game under the tutelage of coach Darren May, who teaches at Grove XXIII, the South Florida club built by the basketball legend Michael Jordan, who Bradley counts as a friend. (A framed scorecard in his office commemorates the Medalist member-guest in which Bradley and Jordan were teammates, signed by Tiger Woods, who played with Ahmad Rashad.) Bradley controlled what he could control, which meant making sure he was one of the TOUR’s best from tee to green. He would be ready when his putting came back to him. If it came back. “I’ve been on every putting machine ever made,” he said. “And the people running them would say, ‘Your stroke looks great!’ And that was even more infuriating.” Determined to find answers, Bradley finally sought help from renowned putting coach Phil Kenyon, and they began working together at THE CJ CUP @ SUMMIT last October. “Technically he was in a good place; whatever journey he’d been on, he wasn’t a basket case,” said Kenyon, who also works with Max Homa, Francesco Molinari and others. “It was about getting him to believe in his technical skills, because golf is so much about confidence, but it was also about improving his green-reading and alignment.” Their work has paid big dividends. Bradley led the field in putting at the Wells Fargo and was gaining strokes on the field on the greens as of last week (81st in Strokes Gained: Putting). “My green-reading is so much better,” he said. Curran said the stats were always somewhat deceiving. “He was never a bad putter,” he said. “It was never a thing like, ooh, boy, you gotta look away. Whenever we played him for money at the Grove or Bear’s Club, the guy was freakin’ good no matter what he used. You were thinking he was going to make everything he looked at.” Boston to his core That Bradley sticks in the fight goes to his Boston roots, and that Micky Ward boxing glove. “I love everything about his story,” Bradley said. “He’s the perfect Boston athlete, just a hard-nosed, blue-collar guy. Tough. Resilient. I love the movie, love everything about his career. And my dad’s side of the family is from near Lowell, so to them he’s an even bigger hero.” Bradley battled through the anchoring ban to win the BMW Championship in 2018, his first win in six years. But this latest resurgence is another example of his resilience. Last year, he dropped out of the top 150 in the world ranking for the first time since 2011, back when he was a winless TOUR rookie. Now he’s back inside the top 50 thanks to five top-10s already this season, four of which have come since March. At 33rd in the FedExCup entering last week, he’s on pace for his best FedExCup finish in four years. Brendan Steele, Bradley’s BFF on TOUR and partner at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans (they finished T4 in April), calls Bradley the quintessential grinder. “He says, ‘I always want to shoot the best score I can,’” Steele said. “He doesn’t subscribe to the theory of, if he’s 8 over, he may as well go for it and blast driver, like a lot of guys out here. He’s like, no, no, I still want to shoot the best score I can.” Bradley’s aunt is LPGA Hall of Famer Pat Bradley, and he recalls trying to catch her attention during tournaments only to have her look right through him. “She was so dialed in she wouldn’t even see me,” he said. “I remember thinking how cool that was.” Keegan, too, gets dialed in and stays there, come what may. In addition to his remarkable bad-weather rounds, he overcame a late triple bogey and won in a playoff over Jason Dufner at the 2011 PGA Championship, his first-ever major. (So much for rookie nerves.) There is something very Bostonian about that. It’s Ward refusing to stay down; the Red Sox besting the New York Yankees after going down 0-3 in the 2004 ALCS; Brady and New England’s history-making 2017 Super Bowl comeback against the Atlanta Falcons. It all seems to be in Bradley’s blood. “He lives and dies Patriots,” Steele said. “We’ve got a group text with Jon Curran and Jamie Lovemark, and Keegan sends us something about the Patriots almost daily. It’s like, come on, dude! We’re at that portion of the day where we’ve got to talk about the Patriots? In April?” Added Curran, “He’s very well informed. He listens to Felger and Mazz, which is like the local sports radio feed. I don’t know how he gets it, but he does. He’ll text like an op-ed piece from the bowels of the internet on what’s going on with the Patriots.” Bradley will throw out the first pitch before the Red Sox/A’s game Tuesday, and he’s determined to enjoy it more than he did in 2011, when the New York Yankees were in town and the stands were swollen with fans. Standing on the hallowed Fenway dirt for the biggest 60-foot-6-inch toss of his life, Bradley was a nervous wreck, and it didn’t help that Red Sox pitchers Tim Wakefield and Jon Lester gave him conflicting advice on whether he should throw from the windup. “They’re both golfers,” he said, “and I think they were messing with me.” Also, he was hoping to throw to big Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek; instead, out came 5-foot-8-inch second baseman Dustin Pedroia. (Yep, definitely messing with him.) In the end, Bradley didn’t throw from the windup, although it was all such a blur, he barely remembers anything. “I threw it a little high,” he said, “but I wasn’t going to bounce it up there. It was a 5 out of 10.” In his day job, he wants to contend five times a year. He wants to make the U.S. Presidents Cup Team that will defend its title at Quail Hollow in the fall. And he wants to look good. Bradley is a Jordan athlete who recently had to rent a storage unit for his sprawling shoe collection, much to Jill’s relief, and he’s had a special pair made up for this U.S. Open. “They’re going to be decked out with Boston stuff,” Curran said. “I think there’s something about Carlton Fisk on there, and other stuff, and this is a guy who doesn’t love attention.” Could Bradley win his second major and fifth TOUR title overall this week? He has not lifted a trophy since the 2018 BMW Championship, but odd things happen at The Country Club, where Ouimet beat favored Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in 1913. This, too, was where Ben Crenshaw’s U.S. Ryder Cup team trailed 10-6 when Crenshaw wagged his finger and said, “I’m a big believer in fate; I have a good feeling about tomorrow.” The Americans won, 14.5–13.5. “We went Friday and Sunday,” Bradley said of that historic week, when asked about it at the 2014 Ryder Cup. “I was on my dad’s shoulders when Justin made that putt. I was on 18 green, but I could see through the trees, and I remember seeing all the red shirts running by.” It was, at the time, the greatest comeback in the history of the event. And there it is again. Willpower. Fortitude. Bradley has seen players go through a dip, only to rally at the end their careers. He’s only 35. He hopes he can conjure something similar. “Almost every week, someone will say, ‘It’s so great to see you playing good again,’” he said. “And I’ll thank them, but it’s not really a compliment. I’ve made the second-to-last playoff event every year but twice, and one of those was during COVID, which was weird for everybody, playing different courses. I feel like I’ve been pretty consistent, even though it’s top-heavy early in my career. I have a lot of good years left, and I’ve got more to prove.”

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