John Wood has caddied in Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups. He’s been to the finals of the WGC-Match Play with three different players. But on Thursday at Austin Country Club he saw the best match-play shot of his life.
“Justin, I’m sure that shot looked very cool on TV,” Wood said on the Golf Channel broadcast. “I was standing about 30 yards right behind him and that is top three shots I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The shot in question came from the Srixon iron of Keegan Bradley, who was 1 down to Adam Scott playing the 18th hole. He’d been down all round, including 3 down with four holes to play. But he’d battled back with wins at 15 and 16 and a lengthy par save at 17 to keep him in the match. But at 18 he blew a giant block-slice so far right off the tee that his ball settled directly behind a row of trees, more than 100 yards behind Scott.
In a stroke-play situation, there’s no question Bradley would have punched out. If he’d been tied or even 1 up, he’d have punched out, too. But desperate times call for desperate lines, and Bradley knew he needed something special. He pulled an iron from his bag, opened his stance, picked a window and swung away.
You can see in the video below what happened next. The ball snuck through Bradley’s intended gap, stayed in the air and bent from left to right, catching the slope at the left edge of the green and riding the ridge down to the hole, leaving less than four feet for a ridiculous birdie.
Looking on, Wood couldn’t believe it.
“Boy, oh boy,” he said, nearly lost for words. “I didn’t honestly think he could get it within 20 yards of the green, much less that close to the hole.”
The rest of the broadcast team pushed him for comparisons. What other match-play heroics had he seen that would measure up?
“After that one, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better shot in match play than that,” he said.
Nobody asked what I thought, but I’ll tell you anyway: I thought it was incredible. I thought it was spectacular. I saw the window. You saw the window. Whenever we’re in the woods, we see the window. But hitting that window with the perfect marriage of trajectory, velocity and left-to-right cut to produce that thing of beauty? Hang it in the Louvre. Send a screenshot to the glass castle in Ponte Vedra Beach. This thing belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of obscure golf shots.
To the next part, then. We saw what the shot did. What did it mean? Everything and nothing. Let’s start with the nothing.
Unfortunately, even though the subsequent birdie saved Bradley’s match result, it didn’t preserve his tournament hopes. Those had been dashed a short while earlier when Justin Rose had defeated Jordan Spieth 3 and 2, ensuring that either Spieth or Rose will exceed Bradley’s point total after their match on Friday. Because Bradley had lost his opening match to Spieth on No. 18, he’d needed an outright victory against Scott. No dice.
But in another important way the shot did matter, at least a little bit. For one thing, Bradley needs all the mojo he can get in this event. He won his first match (in 2012 against Geoff Ogilvy) and either tied or lost the 13 since, losing nine and tying four. This still wasn’t a win — make that nine losses and five ties since his last victory — but it was better than nothing.
It was also a bright spot for Bradley, who gained notoriety as a match-play warrior as a Ryder Cupper early in his career but has made fewer highlight reels in the years that have elapsed since. Before the shot, Bradley’s most notable moment of the week was a viral video of his painstaking putting process, which didn’t engender much goodwill from the 1.5 million viewers who’d watched it on Twitter.
If nothing else, this was a chance to replace that image in viewers’ minds with something far more heroic. It was a moral victory, a mojo victory, a viral victory. That moment of determined execution was worth something. Nobody stares a golf ball down like Keegan Bradley, after all.
“He has that look about him at times,“ David Feherty said on the broadcast. “If he was a dog, he’d chase your car. And catch it.”
What’s next? A meaningless match with Justin Rose on Friday. Maybe he’ll get his first win in Austin in a decade. Maybe he won’t. Either way he’ll carry the title forward of the best match-play shot John Wood has ever seen. Plus my approval. Whatever that’s worth.
