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Keegan Bradley wins the BMW Championship to cap the PGA Tour’s return to Colorado
CASTLE ROCK — The captain stepped in to close out the PGA Tour’s long-awaited return to Colorado.
After entering the final day of the BMW Championship with a one-stroke lead, Keegan Bradley played par golf at Castle Pines Golf Club on Sunday and finished 12 under par for the tournament – one stroke better than Sam Burns, Ludvig Åberg and Adam Scott.
Bradley was the last man to qualify for the tournament at 50th in the FedExCup Playoffs rankings, rising to No. 4 after becoming the 20th multiple winner in the event’s history.
Next up for the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup captain: a chance to win it all at next weekend’s Tour Championship in Atlanta.
“I’ve been in these (nail-biting) situations a lot, and I kept telling myself that,” said Bradley, who also won the BMW in 2018. “There were a few guys on the leaderboard who hadn’t done that on Tour, and I knew this was going to be difficult for them.
“…I came from behind and won, I was in front and won, and I kept telling myself that I’ve been in these situations before and I won and I did it. Today was one of those days.”
The 38-year-old Vermont native played steadily on a final tough day on the Castle Rock course. He birdied the opening hole, then ripped off 13 straight pars and then worked around bogeys at the 15th and 18th with a birdie sandwiched in at the 17th to cap off his seventh career victory.
“I still feel like I’m in the prime of my career,” Bradley said. “I feel like there are a lot of parts of my game that are the best it’s ever been, and I feel like I have years ahead of me. I wanted to make this Ryder Cup team at Bethpage (Black), where I am now. the captain. That’s always a goal of mine. I feel like I can continue to play at a high level for a while.”
It became clear early that Sunday would be another tough day at Castle Pines, which dried up over the weekend after a high-scoring Friday following Thursday afternoon’s thunderstorm.
Both Bradley and Scott started off in a groove as the final duo. Scott opened with an eagle on the par-5 first, capped by a 45-foot putt. Bradley also birdied the hole, and the two took off.
The gallery, as it has throughout the tournament, consistently cheered Bradley on with chants of “USA! USA!” as fans recognized the importance of his captaincy as an active player.
While Bradley settled into a series of pars, Scott missed several birdie putts that he would like to have back. The 44-year-old Australian missed from three yards out on the par-4 second, narrowly missed a long 30-footer on the par-4 third, and then couldn’t hole a 13-footer on the par-4 fifth.
After a bogey on the par-4 sixth and a birdie on the par-5 eighth eliminated each other, Scott struggled to start the back nine. He bogeyed three consecutive holes as Bradley threw pars, putting the latter in control of the leaderboard.
“Ten, 11, 12 ruined it for me,” Scott said. “I was in position on every hole with wedges and made three bogeys. That is actually almost unthinkable. And I definitely struggled on the greens this past weekend. I just didn’t really have the confidence on some of those putts.
Meanwhile, Sam Burns – who teed off almost two hours before Bradley and Scott – entered the clubhouse as the leader at 11-under after firing a round of 7-under. The 28-year-old recorded eight birdies and worked around a bogey at the par-5 14th for the best round of the day.
Burns nearly holed out of the pot bunker for the 18th green, but settled for par instead. His polished round featured Sunday’s best driving performance as he ranked No. 1 in fairway accuracy by hitting 12 of 14 hitting and elite putting. He finished second with 43 yards of putts made.
After Burns’ bunker shot on the 18th rolled close to the hole and stopped 14 inches from the cup, Burns fell face down on the edge of the sand and threw his club as his hat came off.
“I knew it was a good line and I knew it was a pretty good weight. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they don’t,” Burns said. “Yes, (my reaction) was a bit dramatic.”
Bradley’s birdie on the par-5 17th gave him a two-stroke lead heading into the final hole. To make four on the 17th, Bradley hit a 232-yard five-iron to set him up for a look at the eagle. His caddie, Scott Vail, called it “the best shot I’ve ever seen… right on the flag and it landed like a pitching wedge. It felt so soft.”
His golfer agreed, saying the shot under pressure to help close the tournament was “as pure a golf shot as I have ever hit.” That’s a lot of talk considering Bradley has one big win on his resume: the 2011 PGA Championship during his rookie season.
“It was a bit downwind, but on the last hole I hit the 7-iron for 195 adjusted and it just kept going,” Bradley said. “I think I was a little confused. So we just decided to rip that 5 iron… It’s one of those moments where you realize that you can hit these shots in a fight when it matters most, and you can make that shot – I mean , for me that was the shot of the tournament and a shot I will remember forever.”
After Åberg finished with a par and Scott missed a birdie putt at the 18th that would have put pressure on Bradley, the captain two-putted from five feet away to secure the win. Then Bradley threw his arms in the air and hugged Vail and his father, Mark Bradley, the director of instruction at Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis Club in Wyoming. It was the first time Mark saw his son win in person.
Now the man who packed his bags last week and booked a plane ticket to return home to Jupiter, Florida – thinking he would emerge from the top 50 – is in a position to potentially win the FedExCup Playoffs. He also put himself in the conversation for one of the captains of the US Presidents Cup team, led by Jim Furyk.
“The goal for next week? Win,” Vail said. “Take advantage of it while you’re playing well… it doesn’t happen other than six or eight times a year when you’re really at the top of your game. Go out there and win and get some work done next week.”
Bradley’s achievement from bubble boy to champion capped the Tour’s triumphant return to Colorado for the first time since 2014 – and pro golf at Castle Pines since The International ended in 2006
The tournament proved that the extensive course reform was effective in controlling some of the world’s best golfers.
“We have done everything we can to prepare this course for the PGA Tour,” said George Solich, president of Castle Pines Golf Club. “We have largely redesigned five holes in the front and five holes in the back. We rebuilt every green, rebuilt every bunker complex, rebuilt every tee complex. We have recreated or added all the water features.
“And we added about 650 yards to make it (a PGA Tour record) 8,130. So we were ready. You don’t know until Sunday how things will go. Some people said guys might go under 20, but I didn’t say that.’
Solich said earlier this summer that he predicted the BMW Championship winner would be 15 under age.
Bradley’s winning score came in three shots under, while the four-day scoring average for the field was 71.430, less than a stroke under par. Even the No. 1 golfer in the world, Scottie Scheffler, struggled to get to 1 over par.
All told, more than 125,000 fans turned out to take it all in, according to Castle Pines officials.
“We have a lot of strong golf fans in this state and it showed all week,” Solich said. “As of Tuesday, we have broken all attendance records for the BMW Championship. So to say we were a little golf hungry is an understatement. Cherry Hills was a huge success, but this is an even bigger success.”
For Castle Pines, this year’s BMW Championship passed the litmus test of bringing the tournament, or any other PGA event, back in the not-too-distant future.
“We were built for championship golf,” Solich said. “That was (late founder) Jack Vickers’ dream, and he looks down on us with a big thumbs up. We will have the PGA Tour back – we don’t know in what form or when, but it’s too good a place to play golf and too good a theater not to.”
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