Keegan Bradley is still getting used to his new title as U.S. Ryder Cup captain. He still feels like a player who should be competing to win and thinking about playing in the matches.
He certainly looked the part Saturday in the BMW Championship, all while hearing the occasional "U-S-A! U-S-A!" cheer as he made his way across windswept Castle Pines for a wild round of 2-under 70 that gave him a one-shot lead over Adam Scott.
"To be named Ryder Cup captain and still be a full-time player is strange, said Bradley, at 38 the youngest U.S. captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963. "I don't know anyone who knows how to handle this situation, so I'm doing the best I can.
"The only thing I can keep doing is playing my best golf and maybe play my way on to some of these teams."
A victory would make him the first captain to win on the PGA Tour since Davis Love III was 51 when he won the 2015 Wyndham Championship. It also would move Bradley to No. 11 in the world ranking.
One round, but that can feel like a long way off considering the developments Saturday.
Bradley had eight birdies and still only shot 70, a round that featured three straight birdies on the front, three straight bogeys on the back and four birdies over his last five holes (the exception was a bogey on the par-3 16th). He was at 12-under 204.
It was like that for just about everybody.
Adam Scott hit one tee shot out-of-bounds and another in the water after just three holes and had to rally at the end to limit the damage to a 74, leaving him only one shot behind.
"I kind of felt like I made a meal of that, and I didn't feel like I did that much wrong — a couple of drives were just not quite right, and a three-putt, and all of a sudden I'm kind of chasing," Scott said.
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