2025 PGA Championship: Former world number 1 Luke Donald in contention after opening round
05/15/2025 02:15 PM
Luke Donald jumped out among the leaders at Quail Hollow early on Thursday.
There has been so much conversation this season about United States Ryder Cup Captain Keegan Bradley and how he could create a bit of a pickle for himself at Bethpage later this fall. The pickle in question is what Captain Keegan will do if he is one of the best American players in the world at the time it comes down to choosing his roster.
Bradley fired an opening-round score of 3-under par on Thursday at the PGA Championship. When he signed his card he was tied for third, but he was notably trailing someone who nobody would have expected... his adversary come time for the Ryder Cup.
European Captain Luke Donald turned in a score of 4-under par earlier on Thursday at Quail Hollow and surprised the collective golf world in the process. Bradley has been playing solid golf for a while, he arguably should have been selected for the 2023 Ryder Cup that the United States lost to Donald's Europeans, but Donald has not exactly been lighting up scoreboards.
Entering the PGA, Donald had 3 starts on the PGA Tour season and missed the cut in all of them. Of the 7 starts that he made last season he missed the cut in 5 and withdrew from the World Wide Technology Championship in November. Some quick math will tell you that this leaves one other tournament for Donald in 2024... it was his best finish (T68) and it was at the PGA Championship at Valhalla.
It is difficult to fully contextualize just how big of an outlier Donald being at the top of the leaderboard at a major championship is. Outside of his PGA finish last year that we mentioned... he has two total starts in majors since 2018.
Donald was the very first player out on Thursday, Jim Nantz put it well and noted that Luke even hit the literal first shot of the tournament in that sense, so he set the tone and appears ready to be a factor with the weekend a round away.
Who would have ever thought that with so many European winners on Tour this season, obviously Rory McIlroy won The Players and The Masters, and with all of the American star power in the field that the two Ryder Cup captains would be the names hanging out at the top.
It is only Thursday... but what a thrill.
