Keegan Bradley ‘schooled by a great gamer’ in Match Play spat with Miguel Angel Jimenez

Keegan Bradley concedes that Miguel Angel Jimenez got the better of him during their ugly fracas last week in San Francisco, but vigorously denies that his caddie goaded his Match Play opponent into the fray by mocking his Spanish accent.

“I got schooled by a great gamer,” Bradley told Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis earlier this week from TPC Sawgrass, where he’ll contend in The Players Championship come Thursday. “I let him get under my skin.”

The 2011 PGA champion referred to an incident that began simmering on the 13th hole Friday in the new-look Match Play and boiled over into a near-fist fight on the 18th. Both players were already eliminated from weekend play and were going around Harding Park for a few world ranking points, but the competition was clearly not inconsequential for either.

On No. 13, Jimenez eventually conceded the hole to Bradley, but not before asking for two rulings and then dropping his ball. Five holes later, the Spaniard took issue with a drop that an official OK’d for his playing partner, after Bradley yanked a drive left of the fairway and over a fence considered a temporarily immovable obstruction.

Jimenez sauntered over to the scene and objected to official Russell Swanson’s ruling that Bradley could take two drops, one from the fence and the other off a cart path.

The episode escalated from there and was left unsettled as both golfers left the property.

Fast forward to this week and the excitable Bradley’s emotions had abated. He was not quite ready to let things go but contended he had come away from the imbroglio a wiser man.

“I was trying to get a ruling on 18 with an official and I kind of fell for his distraction,” said Bradley, who will likely run into his nemesis a few times before the season’s over. “Honestly, it’s genius on his part. I noticed now what I did wrong and I’ll use it next time.”

About that next time? Bradley was clearly consumed by whether he would suck it up and try to clear the air.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” he said. “I haven’t got that far along. I see him four or five times a year. It’s going to be interesting. As of right now, I’ll have to think about it. … I’m sure it’s not a big deal.”

As for suggestions that his looper, Steve “Pepsi” Hale, egged on Jimenez -- who told the caddie to “shut up” -- by imitating his speech and accent, Bradley adamantly stood by his man.

“That’s 100 percent false,” he said. “I spoke to (Pepsi) man-to-man and … he absolutely, vehemently denies doing that.”

Bradley begins the quest for his first Players title at 8:49 a.m. ET off tee No. 10.

★★★

SB Nation presents: Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn could never last