Keegan Bradley hopes a selfless act can turn into points for Team USA after the Ryder Cup captain resisted strong temptation to combine his role with playing duties at Bethpage next month. Bradley’s confirmation ended the prospect of a first Ryder Cup playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963.
The US turned to Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young and Sam Burns to back up the six automatic qualifiers in an eagerly awaited announcement made by Bradley on Wednesday.
Bradley had finished ahead of Burns, Cantlay and Young on the US points table. The 39-year-old is the No 11 ranked golfer in the world and eighth among Americans, but ultimately decided it would be either unreasonable or unnecessary to perform two jobs at once.
“If I felt I needed to play in this team to help the team win, I would have,” said Bradley. “The decision was made a while ago that I wasn’t playing. The last 48 hours we had the team set. We weren’t scrambling at all.
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“This was a really tough decision. I would say there was a point this year where I was playing, a while ago, and all these guys stepped up in a major way and played their way on to this team. That’s something that I’m really proud of and something that I really wanted.
“I grew up wanting to play Ryder Cups. I grew up wanting to fight alongside these guys. It broke my heart not to play. It really did. You work forever to make these teams but ultimately I was chosen to do a job. I was chosen to be the captain of this team.
“My ultimate goal to start this thing was to be the best captain that I could be. I really want to leave this process knowing I did everything I could as a captain and I was worried if I played, I might not be able to do that.”
It is understood Bradley had turned to one of his assistants, Jim Furyk, to produce a comprehensive dossier on all that Ryder Cup captaincy involved. Furyk led the US in 2018. Armed with Furyk’s information and despite victory at the Travelers Championship in June, Bradley decided to leave his clubs at home. Bradley denied that comments from European players past or present influenced his thought process.
Rory McIlroy had publicly decreed it is not possible to be a playing captain with his sentiment delivered even more strongly by Sam Torrance, Nick Faldo and Ian Woosnam.
“I just am not worried at all about what they do or say,” Bradley said. “I care about our team. I’m not quite sure how he [McIlroy] would know if it’s not possible. No one has ever done it really. I said through this process I wish I could call Arnold Palmer and get his advice. The simple fact is the Ryder Cup is a completely different animal than it was in the 60s.
“They can make comments on what I can and cannot do. No one would have known. I was confident that if I did need to play, I had incredible vice captains that I could lean on, an incredible team I could lean on. But I’ve said through this process over and over and over, I was going to do what I thought was best for the team, and this was the decision that I thought was best.”
US president Donald Trump, who is expected to attend the tournament, had called for Bradley to play. “That was really surreal,” said Bradley. “When you see stuff like that, you start to wonder how you get to this point in your life but I was deeply, deeply honoured to hear him say that.”
Bradley admitted Maverick McNealy, who finished 10th in the US points standings, was entitled to feel sore at not being selected. “Please be angry with me and make the next team,” Bradley said recalling the advice he gave to McNealy.
Bradley would not reveal how many players he contacted to inform them they would not play at Bethpage. Jordan Spieth and Brooks Koepka are the most high-profile absentees from the US team but there was never any viable concept of either being picked this time due to poor form.
Europe captain Luke Donald will name his wildcards on Monday. Shane Lowry, Sepp Straka, Viktor Hovland, Ludvig Åberg, Jon Rahm and Matt Fitzpatrick are expected to be on Donald’s list. Europe comfortably won the trophy in Rome in 2023 but have not prevailed on US soil since 2012. – Guardian
