Mark Bradley is a Wyoming head expert at the Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis Club and still remembers when his son Keegan came out in the college summer. The first one let him work in a golf course shop to achieve his goals, but the following year Mark told his son that if he worked on the game he would cover his expenses.
“I didn’t need to give him nickel,” recalls Mark. “He found some money games with my members. He practiced and played all day, then floated the river at night. He loved fly fishing for cutthroat trout.”
Mark just opened his wallet for his son once more. When Keegan tried Wyoming in professional golf in 2008, Mark bought him an electric blue Ford Focus called Be Bop, which was 190,000 miles. Mark recalls paying $3,000 to support his son with two spectacular cash.
“He certainly didn’t come from a lot of money,” Mark said. “But I had to get him the car. The mechanic told me that his Honda Civic wouldn’t put it out of Wyoming.”
Keegan listened to Howard Stern that summer, as he was bopped nationwide on Be Bop. “If you go too fast,” recalls Keegan. “The mirror on the side took off and we had to tape it onto the door.
Keegan took part in the PGA Tour in 2011 and won twice as a rookie, including the PGA Championship. His victory at the 2025 Travelers Championship was marked for the fourth consecutive year with his eighth career tour title and winner’s circle. This is a pretty feat for the captain of the US Ryder Cup at Beth Page Black this fall. Bradley’s journey had twists and turns, but no one was more stranger than the road to Captain of the Ryder Cup. At 39, Bradley will become the youngest American at the helm since 34-year-old Arnold Palmer in 1963.
“We didn’t have a single conversation about this with anyone until we were told he was the captain,” Bradley announced his choice at a New York press conference in July 2024. “I don’t think I’m more surprised than anything in life. I didn’t know. And it took me a while for it to sink.”
But when it went, he added:
Keegan Bradley has a long history with Beth Page Black
Bradley, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, grew up in Vermont, attended high schools in Massachusetts and lived in New Hampshire. However, only St. John’s University in Queens, New York offered him a golf scholarship. Red Storm Men’s Head Golf Coach Frank Derby has been running the program for 23 years and has brought in Hall of Fame men’s basketball coach Lukarnecca to ensure his commitment. “I always made sure his office was his last stop,” Derby said. “The way Keegan loved basketball, that was the move.”
So Bradley was shipped to Empire State, winning nine tournaments, winning the second in school history, developing a considerable affinity for Beth Page Black while acquiring all the academic teams in the Big East as seniors. Although the school did not have an official home course, Derby exchanged basketball tickets for course access throughout the Metropolitan area. Kevin Courier, then-Beth Page manager, allowed the St. John’s team to park a white school van near the maintenance shed on Monday, and the Black Course was closed and play what was called a “short Course.”
“I love the fourth hole, the par 5 just visually,” Bradley said. Met golfer. “When I first went there, I never played a course that hosted a major. And when you’re on the premises at Beth Page, you’re very aware that this is a major championship golf course. And when you stand on that fourth tee, you can see this huge, vast land, a huge bunker, Heather.
Monday’s Red Storm on Beth Page had one hard, fast rule. Do not cross the Swamp Road. The remaining holes were off limits as they could be discovered by clubhouse security. Derby coach joked when Bethpage Black hosted one of the PGA Tour playoff events. Bradley and his teammates made him and fellow teammate George Zolotus better on Monday during his fourth year.
“We bubbled up playing them,” recalls Bradley. “We said, ‘Screw it in, we’re going.’ You’re in college. You’ve been watching Bethpage Black for four years.
But Derby said Bradley and his teammates are easy bunch to coach, and he would often joke that he is just a hydrating guy and delivering water bottles. “They lived for golf and pizza,” Derby said. “They were always looking for a great pizza parlor and found a new park in Howard Beach.”
During the Ryder Cup, expect the pie from there to the Team USA team room. This first reached Bradley’s blood at the age of 13, attending the 1999 Ryder Cup, and was called “The Battle at Brookline” at the country club with his father. What he went through that day – the crowd, an epic American comeback highlighted by the long-range bomb of 17-year-old Justin Leonard – left a lasting impression.
“I couldn’t believe I was in a golf tournament that felt like this. I felt like going to a patriot game or a loud, loud sporting event,” he said. “So fast forward to Sunday, I was on the shoulder of my 18th green father and could see through Justin Leonard Putt. I couldn’t see it exactly, but I saw him, I saw this loud roar, and I followed him.
“All the fans ran off on the 18th green… and I said, ‘I really want to get out there.’ And he says, “It’s okay, I’ll stand here by this bent tree, you run away there, and I’ll see you here.”
“It was a moment that literally changed my life forever. I treasured being there. The energy of the tournament and the passion of seeing the guys playing and seeing Michael Jordan walking down the fairway was a moment in my golf life that changed everything.”
Bradley was paired with Phil Mickelson on his Ryder Cup debut.
He first advanced to a 12-man team in the US in 2012, paired with Phil Mickelson as a rookie. They continued to try and celebrate every time they won a hole, and failed attempted high fives and embraces. But there was a lot to celebrate. Bradley spent the day pumping his fist and waving at the crowd. He compared one of his birdies to a New England patriot fan cheering on Tom Brady’s touchdown pass. “I wish I could go to another 36,” Bradley said. “This might have been the best day of my life.”
Mickelson never scored two points in a day in the Ryder Cup, and Bradley became the first Ryder Cup rookie to score two points on his first day since Sergio Garcia in 1999.
“That week changed my perspective on golf forever,” Bradley said despite the US “smoking a 10-6 lead in a singles tournament that has come to be known as the Medina miracle.
“The Ryder Cup suddenly became very important to me. During that week, I had some of my best memories, coupled with some of my darkest things in my golf career.”
As a player, he made another appearance on the Ryder Cup team. It was a disappointing defeat at Glen Agles in Scotland in 2014, but it provided a fiery temperament and a 4-3 overall match record. A few years later, his black travel bag at Medina in 2012, embroidered on the Ryder Cup logo and initials, remains closed, sitting in the garage.
“Losing the Ryder Cup in Medina was one of the worst days of my life,” Bradley said. “It was painful to open a suitcase back then.”
The day was a month and he finally promised himself that he wouldn’t open it until he was on the winning side. (In 2013 and again in 2024, he played for the President’s Cup team.)
“That’s how he does it,” Bradley’s father said.
More than 10 years have passed before his next Ryder Cup chance
Bradley thought he would get more opportunities, but before he knew it, it was over a decade past without another shot in the glory of the Ryder Cup. He managed to maintain his playing privilege, but his game was no longer elite after the USGA banned anchors in 2016 and his putting became an issue. His father remembers receiving a text from his son for a year at a PGA Tour event held at the Riviera Country Club near Los Angeles. There, an annoyed Bradley wrote:
In fact, Bradley was ranked one of the worst players on the tour with his short stick. “He knocked down the flagstick for five years because that’s how he keeps the cards because he’s not making anything,” his dad said. “But he worked with it and again became a good putter. People say, ‘I hope he puts better…”
Bradley ranked career-high 20th Strokes obtained with strokes: 2023, the year he finished 11th Snubbed for a captain’s pick in the US Ryder Cup Points ranking. (Three players behind him – No. 12 Sam Burns, No. 13 Rickie Fowler, No. 15 Justin Thomas was chosen instead.)
US Captain Zach Johnson called Bradley to inform him that he was away from the team was the most moving scene in Netflix’s documentary, “Full Swing.” Bradley was able to quickly tell when he responded to the phone that Johnson wasn’t on the team.
“The moment was real, I was crushed,” Bradley said. “It took us a while to get through the whole family. We were devastated.”
He said he thought it might be his last chance to build a Ryder Cup team. Jordan Spieth joined the conference to decide to captain the 2025 US Ryder Cup following another road defeat in Rome. His job belonged to Tiger Woods, but this time he declined to be captain. Because he was too many on his plate as a member of the PGA Tour policy committee. Several names were stolen until Bradley’s name rose. “It was an automatic one!” Spieth said.
It was Johnson who praised him for calling on June 23, 2024 to broadcast the news that he would become captain of the next Ryder Cup.
Bradley returned to Newburyport, Massachusetts, to return to her summer home after the travellers championship. Three days later he stood on the deck, where his parents, sister, stepbrother and wife Jillian gathered, and he broke the news about his captain. “I was breathless,” Mark said. “None of us even thought about it.”
Keegan then asked to wrap the news around until it became official.
“It took a lot of time to not blurt out that,” his mom, Kay, said. link magazine.
Therefore, stubborn Boston sports fans will be in the New York Yankees and Giants country in late September. And if things break the right way for Team USA, Bradley finally gets rid of the devil of the Ryder Cup and can open his bag from 2012.
“I certainly hope to be able to do that with everyone,” he said.
