Sleeping on a six-stroke lead going into the final round of the Genesis Invitational, Jacob Bridgeman couldn’t resist thinking about what it would be like to win his first PGA Tour event. Nor could he ignore the fact that he would be congratulated by the tournament host, none other than Tiger Woods.
“Knowing he was the one to be waiting to shake the winner’s hand made it definitely a little bit more nerve-racking just because when I was growing up, my youngest golf memory was watching him on TV. When he was in his prime, I was learning to talk and walk and play golf,” Bridgeman said. “I’m still kind of in awe of him.”
Bridgeman finally can check the box in his journal next to winning in his list of goals. While the 26-year-old former Clemson star has a long way to go to match Woods in the victory department, he’s 1 up on him at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California, the course Woods played the most on Tour without winning, after shooting a final-round 1-over 72 on Sunday to hold on to a one-stroke triumph over Rory McIlroy and Kurt Kitayama.
“I got one thing,” Bridgeman said. “He’s got all the other ones, but I’ve got one.”
Getting it across the line for his maiden win also was tougher than he imagined as a seven-stroke lead with 12 holes to go slowly evaporated on the back nine until it was almost gone.
“I thought it was going to be a lot easier than that,” Bridgeman said. “It was honestly easy until I got to about 16 and then it got really hard. I can’t believe it. I made it about as hard as I could have made it I think at the end, making it one shot and having to make a three-footer, yeah, this is incredible.”
Bridgeman’s win at a signature event isn’t all that surprising to anyone who has paid attention to his career. He enjoyed one of the most decorated golf careers in Clemson history. After being a three-time Class AAA state champion in South Carolina, he tied the Clemson school record with five tournament victories, his last coming at the 2022 ACC Championship. He was named that season’s ACC Golfer of the Year, and was twice selected ACC Student-Athlete of the Year for men’s golf. Next up, he earned Korn Ferry Tour status for 2023 by virtue of finishing second in PGA Tour U, and made it to the big leagues a year later. He kept his card as a rookie, finishing No. 113 in the FedEx Cup Fall standings, but experienced some growing pains. When as a rookie he missed three cuts in a row in the summer, he admitted his confidence took a hit. “I told a couple people I felt like I’ve been kicked in the face,” he said.
Leave it to his then-girlfriend, now-wife Haley – they tied the knot on Dec. 19 – who reminded him, “work is meant to be balanced with rest.” That helped him find a better head space.
Bridgeman is blessed with raw talent and athletic ability – world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler said he’d include him on his Tour pro basketball team – but he realized he’d never own his swing until he learned to understand its inner workings better. He sought out instructor Scott Hamilton, who first watched Bridgeman play nine holes at the 2022 RSM Classic.
“If I can get this guy on the green, he’s going to be a world beater,” Hamilton recalls thinking.
Bridgeman, who plays with a 10-finger grip, earned a reputation as an elite putter but average at best off the tee and with a pedestrian iron game.
“When I started with him, he couldn’t hit a 4-iron 80 feet in the air,” Hamilton said. “I neutralized his pivot, cleaned up his arm swing, fixed his backswing and added loft to the face at the top to get the ball more airborne.”
Or as Bridgeman put it, “He found a way to change my golf swing without me really knowing over the course of two years.”
Last season, Bridgeman made the Tour Championship in his second year, without a win – a combination that speaks to his rare ability. He finished runner-up at the Cognizant Classic and squandered a 54-hole lead a few weeks later at the Valspar Championship, finishing T-3. Last week, at Pebble Beach, he held the lead early on the back nine before backing up and finishing T-8. He arrived in Tinseltown this week having never played at Riviera before but took to it quickly.
“Awesome course,” he said as he left the press tent after shooting 66. “Played it yesterday for the first time and I love it!”
Bridgeman only loved it more after Friday and Saturday, shooting a pair of 64s to tie the tournament’s 54-hole scoring mark and open a six-stroke lead.
Bridgeman birdied two of the first three holes on Sunday, his lead swelling to seven, before dropping shots at Nos. 4 and 7. He was steady in the middle of the round, stringing together eight straight pars before a bogey at 16 trimmed his lead to one over Kitayama, who closed in 64. Kitayama and McIlroy, who holed a 34-yard bunker shot at No. 12 for birdie and a 40-foot birdie putt at 18 en route to a closing 67, came up just short.
“I tried to make some things happen,” said McIlroy, who fought a balky putter on the weekend. “I holed some putts on the back nine, which is nice, but I’ll rue basically all 18 holes yesterday and then the front nine today, like 27 holes where I failed to capitalize on the chances I gave myself.”
Adam Scott birdied the last for his second 63 of the week and finished fourth, his best finish since the 2024 BMW Championship. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who was 5 over after 10 holes and made the cut on the number, shot a final-round 65 to finish T-12, a stroke outside the top 10 and snapped his streak of 18 straight events with a top-10 finish.
This week belonged to Bridgeman, who gutted out two closing pars for a one-shot win. He ranked first in Strokes Gained: Approach and SG: Putting for the week, just the fourth player to pull off that feat since 2004. About the only thing he failed to do was re-write the record books in the 100th playing of a tournament that originated simply as the Los Angeles Open. With a 72-hole total of 18-under 266, Bridgeman fell short of Lanny Wadkins’s 20-under mark set in 1985, which stands as the longest 72-hole scoring among current events on Tour and survived for another year.
Last month, Bridgeman waited behind the 18th green at Waialae to spray his good friend Chris Gotterup with beer after he won the Sony Open in Hawaii. This time it was Bridgeman’s turn and he got something even better than a beer shower — a congratulatory handshake from Tiger.
“I’ll probably never have a cooler handshake in my life unless I win it again and it probably still won’t be as cool,” he said.