WILMINGTON, Del. — It may be a bit of a stretch to say that Keegan Bradley plays his best at events in the Delaware Valley. But the PGA professional from Vermont certainly seems to like playing here.
In 2018, Bradley won the BMW Championship, held at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square. Four years later, he sits atop the leaderboard after Thursday’s first round at the same tournament, held this year at Wilmington Country Club’s South Course.
“I’m proud of the way I played today,” he said, after shooting a stellar 7-under-par 64.
Bradley has won four times on the PGA Tour, including the 2011 PGA Championship, but his last came at Aronimink. This week is his 104th start since then.
“I think any time you play a course where (you’re) hitting a lot of drivers it’s going to be good for me,” Bradley said. “I feel like that’s one of the things I do best. I think on this course in particular, if you hit the ball in the fairway, there’s a lot of opportunities. If you miss the fairway you’re kind of scrambling a lot of the holes.
“I did that today, hit a lot of fairways, and the ones that I missed I was able to manage.”
The leaderboard sports a slew of big names, like previous major championship winners Justin Thomas, Adam Scott and Shane Lowery, all within three strokes of the lead. Others of note, like Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Patrick Cantlay are all within striking distance with 36 holes to go.
Bradley, 36, torched Wilmington Country Club with a 29 out of the gates that featured six brides in his first nine. He then shrugged off his lone bogey at No. 11, and added two more birdies at the 14th and 15th holes to seize the lead.
“I made a nice putt on the first hole and just kept it going,” said Bradley, the nephew of LPGA Hall of Famer Pat Bradley. “It was really a fun day today playing with Adam (Scott). It’s always great playing with Adam, but we both were playing really well, hitting good shots, making putts. It was a blast.”
An Australian, Scott carded a 65 with four birdies and no bogeys over the course of his final 10 holes, and is all alone just one shot back.
“Keegan made it look easy,” Scott said. “He played beautifully today, and I was really just trying to follow his lead. He kind of had everything going the way he wanted, and most of the time he was teeing off first and I was just trying to follow.”
Thomas heads up a group of three tied for third place at 5-under-par 66, including Lowry and American Harold Varner III. A two-time major winner, Thomas birdied three of his first four holes and then added an eagle at the 622-yard 14th.
“It was the best I’ve putted in an extremely long time,” Thomas said. “Every single putt I hit was exactly where I wanted, the speed I wanted it. It was nice. I hadn’t felt that in a while.”
Varner set the pace very early, firing his 66 while playing in the first group to tee off. The Ohio native notched five birdies, and then also eagled the par-5 14th with a pitch-in from the greenside bunker.
“I thought it was going to be long of the hole,” Varner said. “I was getting out of the bunker and everyone went nuts. I tried to acknowledge everyone… I was trying to get out of the bunker and almost fell.”
An Irishman, Lowery caught fire in the middle of his round by going 5-under over an eight-hole stretch, including – you guessed it, an eagle at 14 – but ended with a bogey at the 18th.
“Obviously a smelly finish, and lunch is not going to taste as nice after that,” Lowery quipped. “But I feel like over the last month or so … that I’ve been struggling to get off to good starts in tournaments, and I’ve been playing my way back into them, but I’ve been grinding all week to do that . It was nice to shoot 5-under today and kind of get myself in the tournament pretty quickly.”
A couple players ranked in the top 10 in the world – Morikawa and Schauffele – have struggled recently but are in early contention at 4-under 67. They are tied for seventh place along with Russell Henley and Chez Reavie, England’s Tyrell Hatton and South Africa’s Christiaan Bezuidenhout.
“It’s a good time to start feeling… a little more confident in your golf game,” Morikawa said.
“I hit some shots that were a little more refreshing,” Schauffele added. “They were on the lines I intended. A couple loose ones, but for the most part I’d say it was a pretty solid round, especially after the way I played last week.”
McIlroy pulled to within a shot of Bradley through 14, but he triple bogeyed the par-3 15th and settled for a 68 to headline a large group at 3-under along with Scottie Scheffler, Cantlay and Spieth.
In all, 41 in the elite field of 70 broke par in round one. But a few big names struggled, such as two-time winner in late July Tony Finau (77) and Spain’s Jon Rahm (73), who is 5th in the latest World Golf Rankings.
“The coolest thing for me is I like seeing different places and I had never been to Delaware,” Varner said. “But when I first came out here I thought par was going to be a good score because the greens were so firm.”