MEDINAH, Ill. — Perhaps no rookie in the history of the Presidents Cup enjoyed a better start to his week in this biennial match-play event than Jacob Bridgeman. Winning a PGA Tour event is always cause for celebration, but seldom does the victory come with the kind of reception he received from his teammates upon arriving in the U.S. team room just hours after winning the title in the inaugural Biltmore Championship.
A dream season took on a surreal shine for the 26-year-old South Carolina native. Nothing like a standing ovation from your peers, guys who have won majors and battled in the golfing trenches together in the Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup.
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“The team reception for me when I came in Sunday night after winning was super cool,” Bridgeman said Tuesday at Medinah Country Club, where he is one of three rookies on a U.S. team that will attempt to beat the International team for an 11th straight time and 14th time overall. “Everyone in there cheering, clapping when I walked in the room. I saw someone posted online about that. That was pretty special.”
A winner in March at the Genesis Invitational, his first on tour, Bridgeman was one of captain Brandt Snedeker’s six captain’s picks after finishing 12th in the points standings. Coupled with his exceptional talent with a putter—he leads the tour in strokes gained/putting—he seemed like a logical choice to join a veteran group. Though he was hardly a lock.
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Chris Gotterup, a close friend and another rookie captain’s pick who won three times this year, couldn’t have been happier to see Bridgeman selected. Going into the Tour Championship in Atlanta, Gotterup wasn’t sure whether his pal would get the call, and he had reason to have doubts.
“After BMW, I was bummed because I didn’t make the top six [in points], and I was seven, and I was like, ‘Man, I wanted to be like [automatic] because I knew they had dinner on Monday night [in Atlanta], and I wanted to be there,'” Gotterup said. “And Sneds texted me Monday. He’s like, ‘Hey, come to dinner. I can’t not have you.’ And then me and Jacob were staying together, and I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t go to dinner Monday,’ and I had to tell him, and I didn’t want to make him feel nervous more than he already was. But for him to finish strong and then obviously back it up last week was really cool. Yeah, he’s a guy that we’ve stayed together for the last four years, and for us to kind of go through it together is cool.”
Bridgeman shot a bogey-free final-round 10-under 61 on Sunday at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove in Arden, N.C, which tied for the second-lowest final-round score by a winner on tour in the last 10 years. He bettered his career low round by two strokes to come from five shots back. For the week, Bridgeman registered 28 birdies and two eagles and led the field in putting—naturally—gaining 8.132 strokes.
What is more astounding about his putting performance, according to the tour, is that Bridgeman led the field in putting despite not making a putt longer than 15 feet for the week, making him the first player in the ShotLink era (covering 800 stroke-play events) to lead that statistic with his longest conversion coming from 14 feet, 11 inches.
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So you might say he’s hitting his irons nicely, too.
Snedeker joked Tuesday about looking like “an idiot” for not using a captain’s pick on J.J. Spaun, who was 10th in the points standings and 17th in the world, after Spaun won the BMW PGA Championship on the DP World Tour Sunday. But Bridgeman made him look pretty good a few hours later.
“I think it’s great for confidence. I think Jacob … I’ve thought highly of Jacob for a long time. To see him go out there … and I had a similar experience. I can go back to when I was picked for a team the first time, and I was able to go out and win the FedEx Cup and help Davis [Love],” said Snedeker, referring to his subsequent selection for the U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2012, also at Medinah. “A, I was super proud to do that, but B, it was really great to have that confidence boost from a captain to pick me when he had every right not to.
“When I saw Jacob play the way he did, I was super happy for him. It was a great moment for him to come into the team room Sunday night and celebrate with the guys and the way he battled. We’re super fortunate we’ve got 12 great guys in the room, got a bunch of great players in American golf. To have a guy come off a win like that, it kind of got the week off to the right start.”
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Jacob Bridgeman comes to Medinah riding the high of winning on Sunday at the PGA Tour’s Biltmore Championship Asheville.
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Alex Slitz
Bridgeman didn’t necessarily go to North Carolina looking to win so much as prepare for Medinah, but he knew he was playing well, so it wasn’t a surprise when he put together a 26-under 258 total for a two-stroke victory over Ben James, who also closed with a 61.
“Mainly, I just used last week as a warmup for this week. The whole week I wanted to prepare myself for this,” he said. “This was the most important thing to me. I happened to play really well and come away with a win. Everything we’ve done in the last month or so has been preparing for this, and we’re all ready.
“Yeah, I think it definitely grew a little bit,” Bridgeman said of his confidence. “I was confident prior to the week in Asheville, and I think I just learned to use it as a test, to test my game, get into competition mode. It maybe gave me a little bit more confidence knowing I could deliver under the gun.”
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Bridgeman found himself having to perform under the gun again on Monday night. As a rookie on the U.S. team, he was forced to stand up with the other first-timers and a sing for teammates and captains. His song of choice was Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” Other than when he faces hitting his first tee shot later this week, that might be the most nerves he’ll feel this week.
He couldn’t even remember what was on last night’s dinner menu because of how overcome he was with trepidation. “I was so nervous about singing a song. I was just eating, staring at the wall.”
Bridgeman managed to get through that ordeal. The way this rookie is playing, the rest of the week might be a bit easier.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
