By Lee Davis
Before his death in 2006, Bradley Johnson earned a reputation for being not only a fine golfer, but a great person.
Johnson likely would have enjoyed the outcome of the 2017 tournament that bears his name.
Mountain Brook junior Ford Clegg defeated Houston Academy’s Hal Dove in the first hole of a playoff at Greystone’s Founder’s Course. Clegg birdied the hole, while Dove earned a par.
Clegg’s effort helped the Spartans earn the team championship with a total of 596, outdistancing runner-up Vestavia Hill’s 612 score. Host team Spain Park tied for fourth at 619.
Making only his third start in a varsity tournament, Clegg put together impressive rounds of 72 and 73 to finish one over par despite chilly temperatures and rain on both days.
Strong iron play may have been the key to the victory, according to Clegg.
“I hit at least 13 greens in regulation on both rounds,” he said. “When something like that happens, I feel like I’m playing pretty well. On the second day, I took a double bogey on a par 5 and was still able to shoot a 73 because I was hitting my irons well.”
Because of the format, Clegg didn’t realize he’d qualified for a playoff until the very end.
“All the scores were coming in at once, and I thought surely someone had broken par (for the tournament),” Clegg recalled. “The greens keepers had already put tarp on the greens and taken up the pins, and everything was closing up. Then the next thing you know, they’ve put the pin on the 18th hole and Hal and I are playing in a playoff.”
Making the win even sweeter for Clegg was the fact that it marked his first-ever tournament victory.
“The fact that my first victory came against a tournament field as strong as this one makes it really special,” he said. “For sure, I’ll never forget it.”
Clegg got his first exposure to golf as a pre-schooler, when his father or grandfather would take him to accompany them on a round at the Country Club of Birmingham. He soon began to play regularly, and by his early teens he had qualified for the junior high golf team. For years, baseball competed for his sports attention, but eventually he decided to devote himself to golf full-time.
“I got serious about competitive golf in the ninth grade,” he said. “I started playing in the tournaments at the club and have been playing ever since.”
Clegg believes his putting and chipping are the best parts of his game, but he wants to improve his overall consistency.
“I need to minimize mistakes and not put myself in a bad position when I don’t hit greens in regulation,” he said. “I tend to get a little more aggressive when I’m playing well so I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I’m scrambling to get a par.”
Clegg ranks the Country Club of Birmingham’s West Course, Shoal Creek and Willow Point in Alexander City as among his top courses in Alabama, but he’s added a new one to his list of favorites.
“I’d have to put Greystone Founders in there, too,” he said, laughing. “If I win at a course, I like it.”
Clegg said he was humbled to win the tournament played in memory of Johnson, an outstanding Spain Park golfer who was killed in an automobile accident 11 years ago.
“To be honest I didn’t know that much about Bradley until I attended the dinner after the first night of the tournament,” he said. “I learned Bradley was the kind of person who tried to find the positives in everything. Whatever the situation, he was determined that something good would come from it. I’m taking that as an inspiration for my own life and my golf game. Even if I have a bad round, I want to build on what I did right, not dwell on what went wrong. That’s the attitude I want to have.”
It’s probably safe to say that Bradley Johnson would have liked Ford Clegg.