Patricia Bradley was born on March 24, 1951, in Westford, Massachusetts. She showed promise of being a world-class skier but decided instead to concentrate ongolf, which she began playing at age 11. Bradley began winning amateur golf competitions in the late 1960s. She attended Florida International University, where she was named an All-American in 1970.

Bradley turned professional in 1974 and shortly thereafter won a qualifying round for the LPGA Tour. Her first major win came two years later, at the Girl Talk Classic (later called the Golden Lights Championship; now defunct) in New York. Bradley steadily won LPGA tournaments each year. In 1983 she won four tournament titles. Her best year, however, was in 1986, when she won five titles, including the ANA Inspiration (also known as the Nabisco Dinah Shore tournament) in California, the LPGA Championship (now the Women’s PGA Championship) played in Ohio that year, and the du Maurier Classic (now the Canadian Pacific Women’s Open) in Canada. With those wins she became the first female player to capture three of the four major tournaments in one season. (The Canadian Pacific Women’s Open is no longer a major grand slam event; it was replaced with the Women’s British Open in 2001. In 2013 the Evian Championship was added as the fifth major tournament.)

In 1986 Bradley was named the player of the year. That year she broke a career-earnings record for LPGA players, becoming the first to gain $2 million in winnings. In 1988 she was diagnosed withGraves disease, but she was able to return the next year in top form. Bradley was the first player to earn $3 million and $4 million in career earnings in 1990 and 1991, respectively. She continued competing throughout the 1990s, being named player of the year again in 1991. She retired from the LPGA Tour in 2004.

Bradley was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1991. Her nephew, Keegan Bradley, was also a successful professional golfer.