Golf needs more Keegans, not Tigers

JOHNS CREEK, Ga.

You hear it all the time. "Golf needs so-and-so" or "golf needs this" or "golf needs that," as if the sport is going to go out of business if big names don't win all the big tournaments.

Nonsense. Golf has been around for a long time. The PGA Championship has been around for 93 years and isn't in any imminent danger. Golf is fine because it attracts the likes of Keegan Bradley.

What Bradley did Sunday, winning the PGA despite having been down five strokes with three holes to play and winning a major while using a long putter, was unprecedented in some ways. But it was nothing new to people who know Bradley, especially people on Long Island.

"The kid is a fighter," said St. John's coach Frank Darby, who recruited a determined teenager from Woodstock, Vt., and watched him grow. "He liked the courses we were playing, he liked what Andrew [Svoboda] did, he liked what Joe Saladino did when he was here. And he wanted to go on the PGA Tour."

To know Bradley is to believe in the kind of finish he provided at the Atlanta Athletic Club Sunday, making two birdies on the final three holes of regulation after having triple-bogeyed the par-3 15th, then beating Jason Dufner in a three-hole playoff.

"When he made that triple bogey, I knew he wasn't out of it," said Dr. Glenn Muraca, a member at Wheatley Hills Golf Club who saw potential in Bradley when he used to practice at the club in East Williston as an undergraduate.

One summer, Bradley took a nonpaying job in the bag room in exchange for being allowed to hit balls all the time. Bradley impressed Muraca with his manner and his game.

"He never went in the bag room again," Muraca said. "Every time I went up there, I took him out to play. I told everyone, 'We've got a guy who's going to be on the PGA Tour.' "

Muraca, who practices in Queens, was in Spain Sunday for his annual trip to get better at speaking Spanish. He watched every bit of the PGA, though, and there was no way he was getting to sleep soon after the playoff, even though it was 2 a.m. there. "Unbelievable," Muraca said. "If any golfer deserves it, it's him."

Sure, Bradley, 25, is friendly with tour golfers such as Brendan Steele, who started Sunday tied for the lead but shot 77 and finished way out of contention. But Bradley's closest friends are his former teammates at St. John's. He was texting them all weekend, and they were texting each other after seeing the shots he pulled off.

"We won a lot of tournaments because of him," said Kevin Velardo, assistant pro at Cherry Valley Club in Garden City. "He was just that much better than everyone else.

"He just has it,'' Velardo said, "whatever that 'it' factor is."

The business of golf has been searching for people with an indefinable something, given that Tiger Woods isn't close to the marketable force he used to be. It remains to be seen if Bradley can put a dent in the marketing problem. Who knows if he is a star?

It seems as though his appeal lies in the fact that he isn't a star. He is an underdog. He is a regular kid, the son of a club pro who gave up on competitive skiing when he was 12 because he was standing in the sleet atop a mountain and said, "This is not as much fun as golf."

Bradley isn't embarrassed about having fun at golf, to the point of laughing Sunday when he was trailing and a long putt hit the back of the hole and bounced out.

He finished a tournament that began with a brief, labored appearance by Woods, whom golf supposedly desperately needs. Last evening, it seemed that if golf needs anything, it needs more Keegan Bradleys.