Keegan Bradley placed on an unbelievable present on the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Sunday.
This 12 months’s Ryder Cup captain holed out for eagle on the par-5 sixth and added 5 extra birdies on the entrance 9 to exit with a 7-under 29 — the primary sub-30 rating recorded at Bay Hill throughout PGA Tour competitors.
His par-breaker on the ninth gap might have been essentially the most spectacular. Bradley tugged his drive left off the tee and his ball settled behind a couple of timber and on the sting of the cart path. After taking aid and dropping beside the trail, Bradley hit a low, spinny wedge across the timber. His ball stopped 4 ft wanting the outlet, as he made a difficult shot look somewhat benign. Bradley then tapped in for his birdie three, his twenty ninth stroke on the entrance 9.
Bradley’s 29 is the seventh sub-30 rating recorded on the PGA Tour in 2025, though six of these 29s got here on par-35s. Bay Hill’s entrance 9 performs to a par of 36, and can also be one of many tougher layouts on the PGA Tour, which makes Bradley’s 29 extra spectacular.
The one different 29 shot on a par-36 this season got here again at The Sentry in January, when Adam Scott shot a 29 on Kapalua’s entrance 9 in the course of the third spherical.
Remarkably, all seven sub-30 scores this season have come on the entrance 9, three of which got here final week at PGA Nationwide in the course of the Cognizant Basic. Jake Knapp fired a 29 on the entrance 9 en path to his record-setting 59 in the course of the opening spherical.
As for Bradley, he added one other birdie on the par-4 tenth on Sunday to get to 8-under on the day and 7-under for the championship. He has performed 11 holes as of this writing. Maybe he can submit a quantity and threaten the lead, which is held by Collin Morikawa at 10-under.
If Bradley continues to play like this for the foreseeable future, he’ll probably turn into a taking part in captain on this 12 months’s Ryder Cup group. He could be the primary American to take action since Arnold Palmer performed and led the U.S. group at East Lake in 1963.
Jack Milko is a golf employees author for SB Nation’s Enjoying By. Observe him on X @jack_milko.
