Stanford alum Bramlett persevered, now prospering
To truly understand Joseph Bramlett’s spot in the golf galaxy this week — savoring his long-awaited first professional victory as he starts a new PGA Tour season in Napa — flash back six or seven years.
Amid a maddening, 30month odyssey seeking solutions to his lingering back injury, he heard one doctor deliver disheartening advice. “If you were my son,” the doctor said, “I’d tell you to find something else to do.” Bramlett didn’t listen. He stuck with golf, persevered through rehabilitation and eventually found relief for his back. Bramlett, who grew up in Saratoga and graduated from Stanford, returned to the thennamed Web.com Tour in January 2016, after 21⁄2 years without playing competitively, and resumed the itinerant life of a tour pro.
Then on Sept. 5, in his 170th career start, Bramlett finally won. He shot 65-65 on the weekend — including a backnine 30 in the final round — to win the Korn Ferry Tour Championship in Indiana and cement his PGA Tour card for the 2021-22 season. (Bramlett finished 146th in the tour’s FedEx Cup standings last season.)
This season begins with Thursday’s opening round of the renamed Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort. No player in the field arrives on more of an adrenaline rush than Bramlett, less than two weeks removed from his signature moment as a pro.
“It meant so much to me
because I didn’t know if I would ever have that chance again,” he said Tuesday. “There were so many days that rehab was going tough and I wasn’t making the progress I wanted to make. You just never know if it’s actually going to all work out.
“To get to that place and finally win a tournament, it just felt so special. It’s something I always believed I was capable of doing, but to actually prove it to myself was really, really gratifying.”
Bramlett, 33, had seemed bound for big things. He became the youngest player to qualify for the U.S. Amateur, at age 14, in 2002; helped Stanford
win the NCAA championship as a freshman in 2007; and earned a spot on the PGA Tour in 2011, barely six months out of college.
But his express trip to the winner’s circle hit a painful detour.
He had a bulging disk, a torn
disk and a cyst in a “weird spot,” as he once put it. Bramlett also had severe inflammation on his facet joints, causing trouble with some nerves. In 2016, he said his problems were nothing doctors could surgically repair.
He finally found the source of the trouble (inflexible hips), with the help of a specialist named Randall Hunt, who focuses on neuromuscular imbalances. Bramlett reshaped his swing to alleviate stress on his hips and back, and he now spends 20 minutes each morning (and more time at night) doing mobility exercises.
“My back is the strongest it’s ever been,” he said. “My body is the strongest it’s ever been.”
Bramlett lives in Las Vegas, so this week’s tournament counts as a homecoming of sorts. He likes the vibe of Silverado’s North Course, where he tied for 35th in 2016 and missed the cut last year.
“It just feels like Northern California golf to me,” Bramlett said. “The grass is what I grew up on, and I love the trees. When trees frame holes, it just feels comfortable.”
“My back is the strongest it’s ever been. My body is the strongest it’s ever been.” Joseph Bramlett, winner, Korn Ferry Tour Championship
Briefly: Jon Rahm, this year’s U.S. Open winner and the world’s top-ranked player, is scheduled to tee off at 7:44 a.m. Thursday alongside Cal alum Max Homa and Si Woo Kim. Rahm missed Wednesday’s pro-am because of stomach issues. … PGA Championship winner Phil Mickelson will be one group behind Rahm, starting at 7:55 a.m. … Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama begins his round at 12:54 p.m.