Bradley grinds way into US Open
Keegan Bradley did not want to be sitting on the couch at his Florida home in two weeks watching the U.S. Open unfold at Shinnecock Hills.
“Watching majors at home, especially when you’ve played in them a bunch, and especially when you’ve won one — it’s heart-wrenching,” the 2011 PGA Championship winner said Monday afternoon at Brookside Golf and Country Club, site of one of 11 sectional qualifiers (one is in England) for the U.S. Open, to be held June 14-17.
“Whenever you watch that person win, I always get that pit in my stomach, ‘Geez, I was there and now I’m sitting on my couch watching,’” he said.
Bradley’s stomach won’t be in knots over the Open this year, unless perhaps he’s standing on the tee at the 72nd hole with a chance to win. The 31-year-old finished 8-under and tied for third at the 36-hole qualifier, played at Brookside and The Lakes Golf and Country Club, to earn one of 14 spots in what will be his seventh consecutive appearance in golf’s national championship.
Other PGA Tour players advancing with Bradley included Harold Varner III, Aaron Baddeley, Russell Knox, Shane Lowry, Brian Gay, Ollie Schniederjans and 2013 Masters winner Adam Scott, who was playing a qualifier for the first time.
Ohio State junior Will Grimmer won the sectional qualifier at Springfield Country Club. The 2017 Big Ten Championship runnerup shot 5 under and will play in his second U.S. Open; the first came at Pinehurst in 2014.
If Bradley, who finished tied for 23rd at the Memorial on Sunday, had failed to qualify on Monday he would have a chance to make the Open field by finishing in the top five at the tour event in Memphis this week. He now plans to skip Memphis.
Honestly, he wishes he could skip the qualifiers, too.
“The fun part is making it out of the qualifier, otherwise it’s awful,” he said.
It was the second straight year Bradley qualified out of Columbus, and third time that he tried. He missed in 2011, the same year he won the PGA Championship.
“I have a picture of me and Webb Simpson standing on this practice green right over here,” he said of his 2011 attempt to qualify. “We’re wearing shorts, trying to qualify to the U.S. Open, and we both won majors the next year. Actually, I might have won it that year.”
He reiterated that the qualifier can be agonizing. In the sectional qualifiers, 71 spots are available to 869 players.
“There’s no joy in it. I shot 66 in the morning, and normally at a tour event you’d be very happy, but here it means nothing. You’re whipping back around, driving 20 minutes away (to the other course), eating quick and going back out.”
But the qualifying experience also reveals gratitude.
“It’s humbling to come out here, because we get treated so well on the PGA Tour and you can kind of forget what mini-tour life was like, or even web.com,” Bradley said. “This is a reminder of how hard you have to work to be out there on the tour.”
And how much you don’t want to go back.