Monday Scramble: U.S. Ryder Cup picture gets complicated, Keegan’s fifth major and Yin’s breakout
Keegan Bradley wins one for Northeasterners everywhere, the U.S. Ryder Cup picture gets complicated, Ruoning Yin’s breakout continues amid another Rose Zhang flourish, and more in this week’s edition of the Monday Scramble:
Sleeping on a 54-hole lead at the Travelers Championship, Keegan Bradley said he awoke twice because of nightmares, a version of Sunday scaries to which only PGA Tour players can relate.
The thought of out-of-bounds tee shots jolted him awake. So, too, did the prospect of getting hunted down by a final-round 60 from Justin Thomas.
The morning didn’t go much smoother for Bradley; he tried to play basketball with his son, thinking that’d calm his nerves, but it didn’t help.
“This morning,” he said, “I was feeling it.”
Every player on Tour wants to win majors, or be a part of a victorious Ryder Cup team, but they each have their favorite tournaments that they want to win, too. Maybe it’s a handshake with Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus. Perhaps they want to be showered with praise in a raucous atmosphere like Phoenix. For Bradley, a native son of Vermont, there was no doubt which regular-season stop held more value than the others: the Travelers. He’d been going to the only consistent New England-area Tour event since he was 10, and he’d been pressing like hell to raise the trophy there.
Bradley was coming off a miserable performance at the U.S. Open, so with his fifth major upcoming, he flew in his swing coach, Darren May, and went to work early in the week. By Thursday, he was flushing it, opening with 62. By Saturday, he was crushing it, staked to a one-shot lead after carding the second-lowest 54-hole total of 189.
“That’s the only time I’ve ever played in my career that I can think of that I did everything the best I could,” he said.
And by Sunday, well, he shook off the poor night’s sleep and the nervy morning and coasted to what, at one time, was a six-shot lead. The last 90 minutes of the tournament – yeah, it got a little tense. Three bogeys in four holes. A Patrick Cantlay charge (and then retreat). But then Bradley stepped up on the tee of the watery 17th, the second-hardest hole on the course, and pured a shot that he ranked among the best he’s ever hit. When his approach shot safely found the green, he could finally exhale.
It won’t go down as one of the most memorable final rounds of the year, but for Bradley, a one-time major champion, it was arguably one of the most satisfying of his career. His wife was there. So were his two young kids, who he had gone mini golfing with after that U.S. Open MC just a week ago. The hearty New England fans were cheering his name like they would have Tom Brady in Foxboro or Paul Pierce at the Garden.
“This is for all the kids like me that grew up in winters and can’t play and would watch the kids from Florida and down south get better and compete and get invited to the biggest tournaments in the country that I was never invited to,” said Bradley, who played his college golf at St. John’s and is now a six-time Tour winner.
“And I hope that they know that they can come from this area. They can come from this area and still make it in golf. If you put your time in and work when you can and enjoy the game, I hope they can see they can do that.”
Walking to sign his card, one of the first things that popped into Bradley’s mind was the Ryder Cup.
This win changed that conversation, too.
There’s only about two months left until the U.S. Ryder Cup team is finalized.
Last fall, the Americans romped to another win in the Presidents Cup, with some longtime observers believing that it was the greatest team ever assembled. There were major champions, world No. 1s, FedExCup champions – by any metric or measure, it was an absolutely loaded squad.
A year later, there are bound to be some new faces in Italy.
Brooks Koepka, even while changing tour allegiances, has been so outstanding in the majors that he’s No. 3 on the list among the six automatic qualifiers. A first-time major winner, U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, is safely in the No. 2 spot.
And the most recent winner, Bradley? He’s all the way up to No. 7, after his second win of the season (Zozo last fall). He hasn’t represented the Americans on a cup team since 2014.
There always figured to be at least some turnover, year over year, especially with Kevin Kisner and Billy Horschel rounding out the U.S. side, but there could be much more than two spots up for grabs.
Currently on the outside looking in and needing a pick from Zach Johnson: Jordan Spieth, Cameron Young, Sam Burns, Collin Morikawa, Tony Finau, Justin Thomas, Kurt Kitayama, Rickie Fowler, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau.
Much can change in two months, of course, but the fact remains that Johnson only has six picks. Some huge names will be left home.
A 20-year-old rising star on the LPGA won her first major on Sunday – it just wasn’t the one you’re thinking of.
Ruoning Yin, the same age as world-beating Rose Zhang, hit her final 37 greens in regulation at Baltusrol and rolled in a 10-foot putt on the final green to win the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
It was the second victory of the season for Yin, who has taken the next step in her second full season on the LPGA. A year ago, she made just seven of 16 cuts and finished 99th on the money list.
A winner in LA in March, Yin was the rare player who stood up to the pressure on a major Sunday.
Zhang made a spirited charge at the title, hoping to become the first player to win her first two LPGA starts, but she made bogey on the par-3 16th and then failed to birdie either of the last two holes, both par 5s. She finished with a 67 and tied for eighth.
Baltusrol’s unique closing stretch should have provided plenty of fireworks, but instead it proved to be a dud: Contenders like Zhang (water off the tee), Carlota Ciganda (water off the tee), Xiyu Lin (water off the tee) and Stephanie Meadow (topped 3-wood that skipped through the pond) all failed to capitalize on the beefy but gettable finishing stretch.
Yin, however, capped off a bogey-free 67 with a clutch 10-footer that made her China’s second major champion.
“When I was walking to this tent,” Yin said, “I just said, ‘Oh, wow, major winner.’ It’s amazing. It’s just unreal.”
There are more questions than answers about what the PGA Tour’s future will look in 2024 and beyond, but it does seem like there is an opportunity to reimagine the most pedestrian stretch of the Tour season.
As it stands, there is an established and familiar cadence to the Tour calendar.
The West Coast swing (on the best courses) to kick off the year. Then the Florida swing ramping up to the Masters.
But what about the rest of the season?
There’s only one notable event between the Masters and PGA (Quail Hollow). Two headline the next gap: Colonial and Muirfield Village. But the quality of the schedule really tails off from now until The Open – events that are interesting only to those who are struggling to keep their card or have sponsor commitments.
The solution could be the third (and largely forgotten) member of that proposed agreement: the DP World Tour. Understandably, much of the focus of the shocking agreement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has been on what it means for the Tour and the future of LIV Golf. But there is a prime opportunity here for the Tour to more closely align with their partners across the pond.
The fix: A month of co-sanctioned coffee golf leading into the year’s final major.
Think about this possible slate:
- British Masters
- Irish Open
- Scottish Open
- The Open
Stage them at interesting courses, with massive purses, in quick succession and in close proximity, and the best players in the world should be tempted to spend at least a few weeks abroad.
More than anything, it gives this stretch an identity besides Survival SZN.
Tip of the Cap: Justin Thomas.
Your trusty correspondent was one of three scribes who tracked down JT after his tie for 152nd at the U.S. Open. It was as low as we’d ever seen him, and he confirmed as much – he called it “embarrassing” and “humiliating” to shoot the scores that he did at Los Angeles Country Club. But he said something else, too – that the performance took him by surprise. That he’d enjoyed a great week of work at home. That he was striping it earlier in the week. It was just … well … a “funny game, man.”
A week later, Thomas showed that he wasn’t delusional. He shot a third-round 62 and finished Travelers week ranked third in strokes gained: tee to green – a monumental improvement, week over week. The tie for ninth was a needed boost for a player who usually takes his playoff positioning for granted but is now 66th, adding starts like this week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic to take some of the pressure off for the rest of the regular season. If this was any indication, JT might be on his way back.
Ugly Final Hour: Patrick Cantlay.
As Bradley was nervously kicking away strokes over the final stages of the Travelers, there was just one player in position to put even more heat on the leader: Cantlay. The world No. 4 has done just about everything this season except win an individual title, posting top-10s in half of his 16 starts (T-14 or better in all three majors) and banking nearly $8 million. But with a chance to potentially steal the Travelers, Cantlay stunningly backed up. He flew his tee shot at the pin on 16 and bounded over the back, his chip coming up 7 feet short and walking off with bogey. He stuffed his approach on 17 to 6 feet, but he missed that one, too. And on 18, his chances all but gone, he missed left of the green with a wedge and needed three more from there, dropping another shot to fall into joint fourth. For a player of his caliber: Woof.
First Time for Everything: Rory McIlroy.
In what looked like a misprint, McIlroy’s opening-round ace at the Travelers was his first on the PGA Tour – his first hole-in-one in 3,253 career par 3s played. In fact, it was just his second ever in competition; the other one was in 2015, in a DP World Tour event in Abu Dhabi. Yes, McIlroy has had a “ton” in casual rounds – but just two in tournament play. Guess it was a week of firsts for the world No. 3, who also tied for seventh at the Travelers, ending his streak of the most starts played at a regular Tour event (four) without a top-10.
Time to Reset: Jon Rahm.
For the first time since September 2021 (!), the burly Spaniard missed a cut on the PGA Tour. This is no cause for alarm, of course, and he likely didn’t mind the extra two days on top of what was already supposed to be a multi-week break ahead of the year’s final major. But it does hint at the fact that Rahmbo isn’t quite as sharp as he was earlier this year, when he ripped off four wins in three months and was on a Tiger-esque trajectory. Let’s hope he gets the rest and recovery he needs to make this final quarter of the season his best.
Impossible to Stop: Scottie Scheffler.
It’s been 18 events since the world No. 1 finished outside the top 12 in a tournament, all the way back to October – some 245 days ago. As it stands now, he’s projected to lose to fewer than 100 players all season on Tour. That. Is. Insane.
Timing is Everything: Zac Blair.
With time running out on his major medical extension, Blair carded a closing 62 and finished in a tie for second, moving him from No. 144 to No. 90 in the FedExCup standings and likely saving his card. All he needs is 25 ½ points in the final seven starts of the season to continue to play out of this category for the remainder of the year, through the fall portion of the schedule.
Same as it Ever Was: Low scores at TPC River Highlands.
It wouldn’t be Travelers week without a couple of runs at a sub-60 score – first, here by Denny McCarthy, in a rare booth glimpse captured by Golf Channel analyst Brad Faxon, and then Rickie Fowler in the third round coming up just shy with his birdie chip on the last. Those 59s wouldn’t have even been the course record – that was the 58 shot by Jim Furyk in 2016 – but there’s still something captivating about watching guys go after golf’s magic number, even if McIlroy thought that a 6,900-yard course like this is becoming “obsolete” because of today’s equipment.
Blown Fantasy Pick of the Week: Viktor Hovland.
Though he was able to extend his cuts-made streak to 22, Young Hov wasn’t firing at TPC River Highlands, where he stalled out over the weekend and finished in a tie for 29th. It was a disappointing week both on the greens (50th) and around the greens (53rd), areas in which he has made significant strides of late. Chalk it up to an increasingly rare misfire – we still like him a lot at Hoylake next month.