Blue Collar: Golf the Bronnenberg Way

One brutally cold Saturday in March of 2015, Keegan Bronnenberg was picking the range at MD's Golf Academy off Cornbread Road.

He spent the winter working there, basically living there. Pounding bucket after bucket of balls, picking the range, hanging out with other golfers. He's always loved the game and being around other people who love it.

It had been a harsh winter, leaving the range covered in snow and ice, and this Saturday was particularly fierce. But golfers are a different breed, and they were still showing up to smack balls into the winter wonderland.

So there was Bronnenberg, then a junior at Muncie Central High School, driving the picker across the frozen turf to gather whatever he could. On dry ground, it's a relatively painless process. A typical run will bring in nine or 10 bushels. That's 500-600 balls.

On this day, the picker was collecting more snow and ice chunks than anything else. He would return with no more than a bushel at a time, and then he had to shake the balls free from the ice. He could barely keep up.

As soon as the balls were distributed to the waiting golfers, the buckets were empty again, so it was back out into the elements for more. It was an agonizingly frustrating task in freezing cold and wet conditions, but Bronnenberg kept going out. And trip by trip, bushel by bushel, he painstakingly provided.

"He kept us rolling that day," MD's owner Doug Bishop said. "That particular day it was the worst of the worst. Most kids, most adults, most people would have quit. He never quit on me."

The thing is, Bronnenberg wasn't just your average range picker. He was also often the best golfer there, even as a high schooler. But he has always worked for his opportunities. And it seems there is hardly a place in Delaware County he hasn't worked.

From sanding tee boxes and filling divots at Albany Golf Club to cleaning carts at The Players Club to mowing the woods at Cardinal Hills, Bronnenberg has gotten his hands dirty. And, in so doing, he's earned playing and practice privileges at each spot. He used those privileges to build a game that made him one of the best players in the Mid-American Conference and has put him on the verge of a professional career.

The tireless practice sessions. The bulldog mentality with which he attacks a course. The unconventional swing with tinges of old-school Arnold Palmer and new-age Matthew Wolff. Bronnenberg's game has always had a workmanlike quality to it.

"I wouldn't compare him to a lot of the kids recruited to play college golf relative to the background and the resources to be able to travel around the country and have really nice practice facilities and country clubs to hang out at all day," Ball State head coach Mike Fleck said. "But I think that's what put that chip on Keegan's shoulder to be as good as he could be. He didn't worry about what he didn't have; he focused on what he needed to do to be elite."

And this weekend he was finally going to get the chance to put his elite game on full display with everything on the line. He and the Cardinals were supposed to be playing the MAC Championships right now. They had a real chance, the Cardinals at the team championship and Bronnenberg – the league's No. 2-rated golfer – at the individual title. Even if neither had happened, Bronnenberg was knocking on the door of the target ranking for an NCAA Regional at-large selection.

But circumstances intervened. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the season in mid-March with four events left. Just like that, Bronnenberg's college playing career was over. He and his teammates sensed it was coming in the days and hours leading up to the ultimate news. That didn't make it any less difficult.

But it was something that perhaps Bronnenberg was better prepared to deal with than most. It was not the first time he was told he could not play.

Keegan Bronnenberg

A Long Wait
Bronnenberg wasn't heavily recruited. He had been successful in tournaments within the state, but he hadn't played on a big-time junior circuit like the American Junior Golf Association. His focus until eighth grade had been more on baseball, playing 60-70 games a summer and attending pitching camps at Ball State. He was under the radar as a golf prospect.

Seemingly, that would work in favor of the hometown school. Fleck was certainly aware of his talents and hoped to land him. It was the perfect setup for the storybook "local kid stays home" scenario. Yet it almost wasn't.

Bronnenberg had other plans. He thought he wanted to get out. Go somewhere different. Try something new. Fleck called him on July 1, 2015, the first day the NCAA permitted phone calls from college coaches to rising high school seniors. It didn't matter. Bronnenberg told Fleck he was committing to play up the road at IPFW (now Purdue Fort Wayne). He hadn't even received a scholarship offer yet, but he had visited a couple times and the Mastodons had shown a good deal of interest. He knew the offer would come. It did.

But it didn't take long in Fort Wayne to realize he wasn't where he wanted to be. He played in every event that fall, even had three top-25 finishes, but something was missing. Muncie sometimes has a way of pulling people back. And so, Bronnenberg transferred home to Ball State after just one semester.

"I was super excited, but there was also some reservation because IPFW wasn't releasing him," Fleck said. "Keegan's entire career was unique relative to what we know as normal."

Unlike football and basketball, golfers and athletes in most sports can transfer and be immediately eligible, even at mid-year, as long as their previous school releases them. It happened just a few years earlier for Ball State when McCormick Clouser transferred in January from Michigan State and helped the Cardinals to the 2013 national championships.

But without the release, Bronnenberg had to sit out a full year of competition. That meant he would miss both the spring and fall of 2017 across two different seasons. He and Fleck then mutually decided to also hold him out of the spring in 2018 so he wouldn't lose an entire year of eligibility for one semester of competition.

It was hard not playing, but he dove even deeper into practice during that period. He rounded out his game, got in better shape and further developed the mental approach he and swing coach Albert Jennings, himself a former BSU golfer, had worked on together. Joel Godett chronicled that period in this piece from April 2019.

By the time Bronnenberg finally teed it up for Ball State on Sept. 16, 2018 at the Golfweek Conference Challenge in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he was two years removed from his all-state high school days, and he had been a Ball State student for more than a year and a half. He shot 69 that day, and his BSU career was finally off and running.

Keegan Bronnenberg

Among the Best
It was the start of a stunted but remarkable two-year career that saw Bronnenberg threaten some of the best scoring numbers in the history of the program.

That first season featured top-10s at Firestone, Maketewah and the Robert Kepler as he helped Ball State to the lowest team scoring average in school history. After a fall full of quality performances, Bronnenberg admittedly put too much pressure on himself last spring. His numbers dropped off, but he still finished the year with a 73.08 stroke average that ranked just outside the top 5 in program history.

Over the summer he took the pressure off, rediscovered the fun in the game again and came back primed for an even better year. He started with a bang, a sixth-place finish at the Golfweek Conference Challenge to help Ball State to a runaway victory and an all-time high national ranking of No. 20. He followed that with one quality performance after another, including a third-place finish back at Maketewah where he opened the Musketeer Classic with a 66. That round showcased the full arsenal, everything he had developed.

"I watched a majority of his round at Maketewah this fall, and he didn't miss a shot," Fleck said. "I would be a couple fairways over or up on a par 3 tee box looking back. I just remember watching him hit shot after shot, and it seemed like every swing the ball was going right where he was looking."

The ball did that a lot this season. And by the time it was over, albeit in just six stroke play events in because of COVID-19, Bronnenberg's 72.61 scoring average trailed only Jamie Broce's 71.74 mark from 1998-99 in the BSU record book. On top of that, only Broce and Eric Steger compiled better averages over a two-year period than Bronnenberg's 72.89.

Steger has played professionally since graduating in 2011, most recently on the Korn Ferry (formerly Web.com) and Latin American tours. Broce played a number of years professionally and has since become one of the top-playing teaching pros in the country, even qualifying for the PGA Championship several years back at Valhalla. That's pretty good company.

Broce was the MAC Player of the Year as a senior in 1999 and remains the only Ball State golfer ever to win that award. But it was seemingly within reach for Bronnenberg entering the final month of this season. With a strong finish and some redemption at the MAC Championships, he might have become the second.

"Keegan underperformed last year in that rain-shortened, 36-hole championship and kind of played his way off the All-MAC team, but this year was in position where he could have been the MAC Player of the Year," Fleck said. "He definitely could have put himself in very strong consideration. I feel bad for all the guys, but especially Keegan, knowing what he experienced with last year's MAC being his only one."

Keegan Bronnenberg

Character Building
One. That number is incredible for a player of Bronnenberg's caliber. In four years of college, he played only one day of conference championship golf. Other high-level golfers might play as many as 12, with three scheduled days of competition at the event each year.

But Bronnenberg missed his first two league championship events completely during the year-and-a-half period he sat out as a transfer. He watched helplessly outside the ropes as the Cardinals saw a final-round lead slip away on the back nine at Sycamore Hills in 2018.

He finally got the chance to play last year, but the event at Club Walden was a virtual washout. Heavy rain canceled the first and last days, leaving just one 36-hole Saturday to determine the champion. It was a forgettable day for Bronnenberg and for the Cardinals who hoped to contend but limped to eighth place.

This year offered the chance for Ball State to exorcise some demons with the event returning to Sycamore Hills and for Bronnenberg to finally get that real conference championship shot. But it was not meant to be.

It would be easy to look back on his career and wonder what might have been had things not been so disjointed. If he had the chance to play a full four years, what more might he have accomplished? Interestingly, that's not really how Bronnenberg looks at it.

"It was a lot of character building," he said. "I think if I would have gone through four years without that, I wouldn't be the same player I am. Who knows what would have happened if I had not had all that time to work and build off the golf course. At the end of the day, prepping for the future, I think what all happened in my four years has made me a lot better person and a lot better golfer."

All told, Bronnenberg played 23 collegiate tournaments, including 19 for Ball State. He technically still has one year of eligibility left, but he is ready to move on. He is graduating with a business analytics degree and will pursue professional golf.

When the season was cut short and Ball State classes went strictly online, he planned to stay with family in Daytona Beach and get a jump start on playing professionally. But with stay-at-home orders in effect and tours shut down, he has remained in Muncie for the time being.

And while his fellow professional hopefuls are somewhere out there playing pristine courses and practicing at high-dollar facilities with all the bells and whistles, Bronnenberg is prepping for his pro career the same way he always has, by wearing out Cardinal Hills and MD's.

It's not the typical setup for a fledgling touring pro, but then again Bronnenberg's path has never been typical as it relates to most high-level players.

Keegan Bronnenberg

A Blue Collar Upbringing
Bronnenberg's introduction to the game came as a toddler when his great grandfather Marvin Sites cut down some clubs and took him out to Lakeview, just north of Muncie off State Road 3 in Eaton. Once or twice a month, young Keegan would tag along. Sites was in his early 70's at the time, hitting it 150 yards but straight down the middle and "putting the mess out of it" as Bronnenberg recalls. It's where Bronnenberg first learned to deal with pressure as Sites made him grind over 3-foot putts.

As he got older, he spent his summer days playing at Crestview on the city's south side. His father Michael, a UPS driver, would drop him off first thing in the morning and he'd play all day, stopping only at lunch time for a ham and cheese sandwich at Mulligan's Grill in the clubhouse. He'd be out there until dark some nights, one in particular when his grandfather Kevin Hiatt threw down ball after ball in the greenside bunker on the 14th hole, determined to see a 10-year-old Bronnenberg improve his sand game.

Lakeview and Crestview could both be described as working class courses, built in the 1950s and '60s when Muncie was thriving as an industrial city. There is nothing terribly fancy about them. No immaculate locker rooms. No pyramids of balls stacked on the range. Instead you put a token in a machine and try to collect the balls in your basket before they spill all over the pavement.

A round at The Players Club was "like a gift" for Bronnenberg, and he didn't play Delaware Country Club until high school when he struck up a deal for a golf-only membership. But for him it never really mattered. Just give him a ball and a club and somewhere to hit it. Whether it's a cornfield or Erin Hills, he's going to get better.

"I grew up in a middle class family," he said. "We never went without, but I wasn't a country club kid. I take pride in that. Anybody can play. That's why I love working and playing at Cardinal Hills because there are a bunch of really good guys who love the game of golf. That's me."

Cardinal Hills. It's a track that is woven deeply into the history of the Ball State men's golf program. Before The Players Club opened in the early 1990s and became, along with Delaware Country Club, a primary practice home for the team, Earl Yestingsmeier's Ball State squads played at Cardinal Hills. Fleck played there for Yestingsmeier.

Scott Fehlinger is the pro there now, but he was just a child in 1982 when his parents bought the course. A Bill Diddle design on land once owned by the Ball Brothers, it previously went by the names Green Hills and Whispering Oaks. A young Fehlinger used to follow around BSU's future PGA Tour players like Brian Tennyson and Jeff Gallagher as they practiced. Now he plays out there with another one of Ball State's best.

"When BSU played here back in the '70s and '80s, you look back at who played and it's a who's who of golf in Indiana," Fehlinger said. "I think Keegan found out that history and just wanted to follow along and see where it takes him."

The course is unconventional, especially in today's era of longer and wider. Bronnenberg likes it that way. He sees it as an advantage. He takes driver out of the bag and works on his iron game. The tight fairways force him to be accurate. As Bishop says, "ball striking is ball striking whether it's Augusta National or Cardinal Hills." And the tiny greens not only sharpen his approach shots but also offer plenty of opportunities to work on his short game.

Fehlinger used to hold the course record there with a 62. Hard for anyone to beat that. But Bronnenberg did. He shot 61.

Fehlinger trusts Bronnenberg to run the golf shop when he's not around, and he has also seen the wunderkind embrace the regulars out there. They were timid around him at first because of his ability. Now they all want to play with him, not only because he hits it a mile but because he's so down to earth and easy to talk to.

The two have played a lot of golf together in recent years. Fehlinger has also played alongside some of Indiana's other top prospects from time to time in events like the state open. Several years ago he was paired with a young Patrick Rodgers, the Avon product who went to Stanford and is now playing on the PGA Tour. Bronnenberg's game amazes him as much as, if not more than, Rodgers did at that time.

"It's just so impressive is to see him hit a golf ball," Fehlinger said. "That golf ball gets hurt. He sends it."

Ask anybody who has worked with Bronnenberg over the years, and they will all tell you his distance and competitiveness were the first things to stand out.

Gifted with athleticism and tremendous hand-eye coordination, he always hit it farther than kids his age and even some older than him. As a 7-year-old kid in Bishop's junior golf program at MD's, Bronnenberg always stationed himself next to the 12 and 13-year olds, trying to squeeze everything out of his swing to hit it as far as they did.

He figured things out intuitively to the point that Bishop took a non-invasive approach so as not to bog him down with technical thoughts. And Bishop couldn't get him to leave. Among players who have come through his doors, he compares Bronnenberg's work ethic only to that of former Delta High School star and PGA Tour player Chase Wright.

"Keegan didn't come out here and hit buckets of balls," he said. "He hit bushels of balls. We should have charged him rent. He was here forever. We could have put a cot in the back and moved him in."

The work ethic was also immediately apparent to Jennings, now an instructor at Touchet Golf in Fort Wayne. Bronnenberg was his first student.

"I had started helping kids in the summers, so I had some gauge for what it was like to work with a teenage guy that wanted to play college golf," Jennings said. "He seemed very different than kids I was around before. I would say, 'do this,' and he would hit hundreds of balls before the next time we talked."

Keegan Bronnenberg

The Next Chapter
These days Bronnenberg has actually dialed back some of that prodigious length, sacrificing some distance for better accuracy. He's improved his wedge play, his putting and his short game, all weaknesses if only relatively compared to his moon shots off the tee. They're all things he'll need at the next level where everybody hits it far. He's also continued to develop the mental side of his game, key to navigating the professional world where the competition is greater than ever.

Schedules are still somewhat up in the air for the summer months as things continue to shake out from the pandemic. But sooner rather than later, Bronnenberg will launch his pro career. He will play the Korn Ferry Tour qualifying series in the fall and see where he goes from there. Those who know him best believe his blue collar attitude and passion for the game can only be assets.

"He has really loved and breathed the game ever since I've known him," Jennings said. "There has to be an amount of obsession with the sport to even have a chance at that level. I see Keegan as someone who enjoys the sport and trying to master it. Usually people like that stay in it a bit longer. He's excited about the challenge, and I think he's pretty primed to give it a good shot. I have a lot of faith in him."

Bronnenberg may be leaving for bigger things, but he'll carry the banner for Ball State and Muncie wherever he goes. He's a blue collar player from a blue collar town, and he's proud of that. And even though his college career was put on hold for a while and ultimately cut short, he doesn't look back with any regret.

"One of the best memories is just saying I played golf for my hometown," Bronnenberg said. "I got to wake up every day in my back yard and play college golf."

Golf Bag Walk, Keegan Bronnenberg

Players Mentioned

Keegan Bronnenberg

Related Videos