Keegan Bradley Objects to Golf Ball Rollback Plans

The 36-year-old had some critical words for the USGA during his impressive Memorial Tournament outing.

Keegan Bradley took a different swing into the third round of the Memorial Tournament, tying his lowest career round at Muirfield Village on Saturday.

The 7-under 65, which duplicated his third round in 2015, was on the verge of a career-setting round if not for a bogey at the last hole.

The swing adjustment, which was simply taking the club out away from his body versus seemingly picking the club up, had generated a shallower swing, that on Friday produced shots pulled left at times and a 1-over 73.

On Saturday, the change made an eight-shot difference.

“Basically, made every putt I looked at today,” Bradley said of his success, which included only 24 putts and the top spot of the strokes gained putting category for the third round. “But I've been working on this feel the past couple weeks and I've sort of left it on the range and tried to play, and then today I just said screw it and I went out there and I had this—the feel that I've been working on, and I just hit a lot, a lot more quality iron shots.”

After the round, Bradley not only discussed his performance, which continued to get better and better as the third round progressed, moving up the leaderboard, but he also commented on the new elephant in the room, rolling the ball back. A proposal that the USGA and R&A have floated and is in the comment stage, would roll the ball back to slow down the distance proliferation that the governing bodies are concerned about.

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Bradley was at the heart of another rules battle when almost a decade ago, the governing bodies decided that anchoring a club should be deemed illegal and wanted to change the rules of golf to reflect that. At the time, Bradley used a belly putter, which was affixed to his stomach and his putting stroke was very much like a fulcrum.

After years of debate and discussions with everyone in golf, the anchored stroke was banned on January 1, 2016, presenting Bradley with the quandary of how to go back to a more conventional stroke following years of perfecting his anchored belly stroke.

“I have a really strange relationship with the USGA from the belly putter,” Bradley said. “I just feel like the USGA admits to making mistakes and then they punish the players for it. I don't feel like it's our fault that they think that the ball went too far or that they should have banned the belly putter.”

In the first round of the 2014 Memorial, Bradley after advice from his mother, decided to use a conventional putter and shot an opening round 67, the best of his 13 opening rounds.

After his round in 2014, Bradley talked about having to make the permanent change to a conventional putting stroke from the belly stroke.

“My original plan was to hopefully qualify for the Ryder Cup team and really start to think about switching after the Ryder Cup,” Bradley said in May of 2014. “I would say that it's constantly on my mind of I gotta do this and I've done some stuff in terms of getting the putters and putting with them for five minutes, but that's about it.”

In 2016, Bradley had one of his worst seasons as a professional with 10 missed cuts in 23 events and a lone top 10 when he finished eighth at the Memorial.

It's seven and half years later and Bradley, along with the rest of professional golf is experiencing another potential decision by the governing bodies that Bradley believes is not in the best interest of the players.

“They retroactively, decades later, try to adjust, and then they just throw it on us,” Bradley said of the governing bodies. “We do this as a living. This is how we make our living. I don’t think that’s necessarily fair that we pay for their mistakes. And I don’t—I think it’s fine. I mean, what are you going to do if you roll the ball back on this course? You got to build all new tees. It’s 7,800 yards long.”