DETROIT – Mark Bradley still remembers when he was head professional in Wyoming at Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club and his son, Keegan, would come out for the summer. The first one he made him work in the shop at the golf shop to make ends meet but the next year he told his son that as long as he worked on his game, he’d cover his expenses.

“But I never had to give him a nickel. He found some money games with my members. He would practice and play all day and float the river at night. He loved his fly fishing for Cutthroat Trout,” Mark recalls.

Mark only had to open his wallet for his son, who won the Travelers Championship on Sunday and a paycheck for $ 3.6 million, one more time. When Keegan rolled out of Wyoming to try his hand in professional golf in 2008, Mark bought him an electric-blue Ford Focus nicknamed Be Bop with 190,000 miles on it for $ 3,000 and backed him with a couple grand in cash.

“He sure as hell didn’t come from a lot of money,” Mark said. “But I had to get him a car. The mechanic told me his Honda Civic wouldn’t make it out of Wyoming.”

Keegan spent that summer listening to Howard Stern as he be-bopped around the country in Be Bop. “If you went too fast,” Keegan recalled, “the mirror on the side would fly off so I had to tape it to my door and then sooner or later I think one of the maintenance guys in the golf course just deadbolted it on the side of my car.”

Keegan, 38, made it to the PGA Tour in 2011 and won twice as a rookie, including the PGA Championship. His victory at the 2025 Travelers Championship marked his eighth career Tour title and fourth straight year in the winner’s circle, quite a feat for the U.S. Ryder Cup captain this fall at Bethpage, where he could be the first playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963.

While Keegan was lighting up TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut, on Saturday to the tune of 63 to earn his way into the final group at three strokes behind 54-leader Tommy Fleetwood, his dad drove to Long Island, New York, and Bethpage Black, not far from Keegan’s alma mater, St. John’s University. Mark wanted to see the Ryder Cup venue up close before it was all built out for the biennial competition against a 12-man squad from Europe. 

“It’s already underway, but it was fun to go back to a place that Keegan spent a lot of his college days at and used to sneak on,” Mark said. “I sent Keegan a picture of the maintenance shed where the team used to park their white van. That was the night before. I think it fired him up.”

Keegan sank a 64-foot birdie putt at the ninth and holed a nervy 5-foot birdie putt at 18 on a windy final day to claim the title. Mark was there to witness his son’s heroics, the second straight victory by Keegan – the other being the BMW Championship in August – that he was able to witness. 

“When I saw him win in Colorado, I saw in his swing, I said, ‘Man, it’s so precise right now and he’s got really great control of his golf ball.’ Knock on wood, you know, I don’t want to jinx him, but he’s got that same swing going,” Mark said.

That repeatability is a key part of his success, Keegan said.

“I’ve owned my swing. I know what to do, I know the mistakes that I make when things are bad,” he said. “I think over the years I’ve really learned to accept how my swing looks. I’ve got a weird setup, like my hands are really low, everyone thinks my clubs are super short. I’ve done a good job of owning that and that’s the best way to have me play well.” 

The win on Sunday lifted Keegan to No. 7 in the Official World Golf Ranking, a career best, and he jumped to No. 9 in the U.S. Ryder Cup rankings. (The top six automatically qualify for the team and the captain has six picks to round out the 12-man team.)

“This changes the story a little bit,” Bradley said Sunday. “I never would have thought about playing if I hadn’t won. This definitely opens the door to play. I don’t know if I’m going to do it or not, but I certainly have to take a pretty hard look at what’s best for the team and we’ll see.”

Collin Morikawa, who has been a member of the last two U.S. Ryder Cup teams and currently ranks seventh in the Ryder Cup standings, said that Bradley needs to be in the mix. 

“Right now he’s playing as one of the best Americans and one of the best golfers in the world winning a signature event, the consistency I think he’s brought this year. Yeah, I’m sure there’s already contingencies to be put in place because it’s not like it wasn’t a possibility that that could happen,” Morikawa said. “He cares so much about representing the United States that it like bleeds out of him and it bleeds into us, and that just motivates me more.” 

Keegan’s dad isn’t sure how things are going to play out in terms of being a playing captain in late September, but he knows there has been one positive out of being U.S. Ryder Cup captain.

“It’s inspired him,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Keegan Bradley said latest win ‘opens the door to play’ 2025 Ryder Cup

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