‘Tiger and Phil would have done it!’ Keegan Bradley does a full one-eighty on Ryder Cup dilemma
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Keegan Bradley was only ever half in the conversation to be a Ryder Cup player-captain. Now it’s all but guaranteed. Turns out, though, it was the plan all along…
It was 10 minutes that might just have changed the course of golf history.
Standing in the middle of the 72nd fairway at the Travelers Championship, Tommy Fleetwood led by one as he chased his first PGA Tour victory in his 159th start.
A few yards away, Keegan Bradley was relying on his rival to slip up if he was to lift his eighth PGA Tour title.
After a quick change of heart on which club to hit, Fleetwood fired first and fell short. Smelling blood and with nothing to lose other than a few dollars, Bradley went straight at the pin.
The gamble paid off.
Fleetwood three-putted and it left Bradley with the simple task of rolling in a routine birdie putt that could – and almost certainly will – have huge ramifications on this year’s Ryder Cup.
Fleetwood is all but guaranteed for Bethpage. His second place at TPC River Highlands moves him up into the same position in the qualification standings. Not that it’s on his mind just yet. To his eternal credit, he fronted up to the media. “I would love to just go and sulk somewhere, and maybe I will do,” he explained. “But there’s just no point making it a negative for the future really, I’ll just take the positives and move on.”
But the big question now is Bradley’s role at the 45th playing of golf’s biggest team showdown.
Talk of the 39-year-old taking on a player-captain role has been going on for a few months now as he continued his good form from the end of last season into 2025.
Turns out that’s been something on the PGA of America’s mind since the phone call that shocked not only Bradley – “I don’t think I’ll ever be more surprised by anything in my entire life” – but the entire golf world.
Bradley, whose latest win moves him up to a career-high 7th in the world rankings, explained: “When they called me and told me that I was being the Ryder Cup captain, the first thing they said was, ‘We want you to be the first playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963.’ And my head was spinning. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but they knew that that was a possibility and that we would have things in place for that.
“[It] is a heavy burden, but I’m also fortunate. If Tiger [Woods] or Phil [Mickelson] got a captaincy at my age they would have done it the same way. I’ve just been lucky enough to be asked to do this at a younger age.”
He added: “But I’m always trying to be the best that I can be, and I feel like I’m playing the best golf of my career right now. A year ago, I don’t know if I would have thought I would be 7th in the world, but I certainly thought I would be contending in tournaments.”
Only five Americans – Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa and Russell Henley – rank higher than Bradley in the OWGR, while Data Golf has him at 17th, with Bryson DeChambeau, Sam Burns, Ben Griffin and Patrick Cantlay the other compatriots above him. As far as Ryder Cup qualification goes, Bradley sits ninth.
And although he has always insisted that playing in the Ryder Cup has never been a consideration, it seems he has now pulled a full one-eighty on that stance.
“It’s insane,” he said, laughing. “My whole life, every year I was out here I wanted to play on the Ryder Cup team, and then this would be the first year where maybe I didn’t want to. I just wanted to be the captain and, of course, this is what happens.
“Whether that’s me on the team – this certainly changes a lot of things. I was never going to play on the team unless I had won a tournament.”
Then, just to err on the side of caution, he added: “But we’ll see. I’m going to do whatever I think is best for the team.”
You’d be hard pressed to argue that there are 12 Americans who are playing better golf than Bradley right now. Bethpage is going to feel very different.
From a European perspective, let’s just hope he doesn’t get the chance to open that suitcase…
