Patriots fanatic Keegan Bradley will race to finish Phoenix Open in time for Super Bowl

Keegan Bradley is such a Patriots fanboy that he may almost prefer not winning this week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open just to be sure he’s in his seat for the coin toss for the Super Bowl on Sunday night.

The final round of the TPC Scottsdale cocktail party is slated to wrap up about a half hour ahead of kickoff some 30 miles down the road in Glendale. That small window posed a dilemma for the Vermont native who’s a passionate homer for all-things Boston sports.

“It’s a lot harder than you would imagine, but I’d like to win this tournament, but just to be here and be able to go watch the Patriots play in the Super Bowl is a dream come true,” Bradley told reporters on Wednesday, ahead of Thursday’s Phoenix Open start. “I never thought I’d be able to get to go to a Super Bowl, let alone watch the Patriots play and hopefully they will win.”

Thanks to playing in a pro-am at last week’s Humana Challenge with a friend of Pats’ owner Robert Kraft, Bradley secured four tickets for himself, his girlfriend, and fellow WMPO competitor Brendan Steele and his wife, according to the New York Times’ Karen Crouse. But if he’s in contention on Sunday, and Tiger Woods -- making his first start in Phoenix since 2001 -- gets to the weekend as well, the finale to the wildest event on the PGA Tour calendar will be even zanier and more congested than usual.

So all Bradley has to do is drop his fourth tour-winning putt and hightail it to the stadium -- and hope his match doesn’t go into overtime.

Um, good luck with that, as Brandt Snedeker learned in 2008, when Glendale hosted its most recent Super Bowl and he was in one of the last groups on Sunday. He arrived in time for kickoff, but just barely, as Crouse noted.

It’s even more complicated than that for the Vermont native who’s been a buddy of Tom Brady since New England’s superstar QB texted him congratulations for winning the 2011 PGA Championship. Like many other athletes and their followers, Bradley is serious about his superstitions, which, if there’s anything to them, could spell trouble for the Pats’ chances against the Seahawks.

“I normally like to watch [Bill Belichick’s squad], when I’m home -- I have watched every game this year, so I like to sit in the same spot,” admitted Bradley, whose twitchy pre-shot routine and stink-eye putting setup are renown on tour. “I have -- this is really embarrassing, but I have a set of wide receiver Patriot gloves I put on now and then.

“I had them on the last time they were losing against the Ravens,” Bradley added, referring to the Patriots’ 35-31 comeback win against Baltimore in their AFC divisional playoff game. “I took them off and I left them at home. I didn’t bring them. I get a lot of weird stuff I do, as you all are very aware of.”

Like traveling with his beloved belly putter even though he’s made the switch to an unanchored flat stick.

“I don’t know why I travel with it, because I have no plans to use it,” said Bradley, who replaced his 46.5-inch White Hot XG Sabertooth with a conventional-length model at Woods’ Hero Challenge last month. “I just -- I don’t know. I feel like it’s a lot of superstition. I can’t explain it. You don’t have a clue how many superstitions I’ve got.”

In the meantime, while Mickelson told Crouse he had been to enough Super Bowls and had no plans to make the mad dash to the mother of all sporting events this time around, Bradley knew exactly where he planned to be as close as possible to 6:30 p.m. ET Sunday night.

“I’ve watched every minute of every one of their games this year,” Bradley said to Crouse. “I don’t want to miss the start of the Super Bowl.”