As U.S. Ryder Cup captain, Keegan Bradley needs to take himself out of it

Washington Post

3 days ago

OWINGS MILLS, Md. — One way to look at the impending Ryder Cup fiasco is that Keegan Bradley, PGA Tour pro, has played unexpectedly good golf for most of this season. He has made the job of Keegan Bradley, U.S. Ryder Cup captain, quite difficult. Earn his way onto his own team for next month's competition? It remains possible.
Another way to look at it: Regardless of how he plays in the remaining two PGA Tour events before he must choose his team, Bradley should stand down. Step aside. Being the team captain is enough. Playing would be too much.
For reference, let's take the 2027 Ryder Cup in Ireland. Rory McIlroy is from Northern Ireland. Wouldn't he be a perfect fit for captain of the European team? Why not take on that challenge of playing and captaining?
'The idea of me being a playing captain sometime soon … has come up,' McIlroy revealed Wednesday. 'And I've shot it down straightaway.'
Why?
'Because I don't think you can do it.'
That's a reasonable take. But Bradley doesn't have to listen to a star on the rival team. He should, however, listen to reason.
'He might be right,' Bradley said. 'We don't know. No one knows.'
Let's not find out.
Here we are, less than two weeks from Bradley naming his team, and the captain clearly still is mulling his standing for his own squad. He is 10th in the U.S. standings. The top six make the team automatically. The next six are captain's picks. Perform well at this week's BMW Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club, where he spoke Wednesday, and he will move up in the standings. Perform well at next week's Tour Championship, and Bradley the player will put more pressure on Bradley the captain.
'I certainly have a lot of concerns, as well as everybody else,' Bradley said. '… I can truly sit here right now and say I don't know what's going to happen. I have to look at myself just like any other player trying to make the team.'
Except he's not any other player trying to make the team. He's the captain charged with leading it.
Bradley said Wednesday that the enormity of his impending task is beginning to weigh on him in ways that it hadn't before now. The matches are Sept. 26-28 at Bethpage Black on Long Island. That's six weeks away. There's much to do.
'The Ryder Cup has always been so far away, and now it's right there,' Bradley said. '… I'm thinking a lot more about it now. I'm laying in bed thinking about golf balls that the guys play, thinking about pairings. Certainly amped up.'
As is most of the sport. The Ryder Cup has morphed from a biennial exhibition between Europe and the United States into something of a golf behemoth. The challenge for Bradley's American charges is gargantuan. The crowds at Bethpage should be somewhere between boisterous and unreasonable and could bring a brand of partisanship that borders on embarrassing.
The American captain should be in charge of quieting that noise for his team, not playing through it. He isn't just responsible for announcing his six captain's picks Aug. 27. He has a say in course setup. He will choose who plays with whom and when. He must organize. He must inspire. It's a lot.
Why complicate it, then? If you're already thinking about which brand of golf ball one of your players uses and what the impact might be on a partner who plays a different brand, and that keeps you up at night — why introduce your own swing into the mix?
Maybe because he has significant support.
'I think if it's something that Keegan wants to be part of the team and wants to play, I think he's a guy we'd all love to have on the team,' said none other than Scottie Scheffler, the best golfer on the planet. 'The intensity that he's brought as a captain — I mean, he has definitely exceeded my expectations as a captain.'
That's a strong endorsement from perhaps the most important voice. And it is added to a chorus of American players who have backed Bradley's candidacy to play.
Back to McIlroy. Maybe he's merely trying to mess with his opponents' minds, but his answers about why he already has shot down the idea of being a playing captain one day seemed genuine.
'You think about the extra media that a captain has to do,' he said. 'You think about the extra meetings that the captains have to do with the vice captains, with the PGA of America, in Keegan's case, preparing your speech for the opening ceremony. There's a lot of things that people don't see that the captain does the week of the Ryder Cup — especially now that the Ryder Cup has become so big.'
This dilemma is only partly Bradley's fault, and all he did to get here was play pretty good golf. He won the Travelers Championship in June to rise to seventh in the world rankings. He has four other top-10 finishes this calendar year. Even as his past four events have yielded a missed cut and no finish higher than a tie for 30th — dropping him to 12th in the rankings — he certainly would be under consideration by any other American captain.
'I definitely think he's one of the best 12 American players right now,' McIlroy said. 'That's why everyone is so interested and it's such a compelling case.'
It could have been compelling to watch Bradley the player try to earn his way on. The PGA of America — the organization that stages the Ryder Cup and that is wholly separate and different from the PGA Tour — made it a potential debacle by naming Bradley captain for a Ryder Cup in which he was going to be just 39 years old. The interview process essentially went like this:
Seth Waugh, former CEO of the PGA of America: 'Keegan, this is Seth. Would you like to be Ryder Cup captain?'
Bradley, dumbfounded: 'Uh, sure?'
Maybe wait for him to be a vice captain a time or two before offering him the big chair? Maybe wait for him to be in his mid- to late 40s, when he would have less of a chance to put himself in the position he's in?
But here we are.
Not that anyone should make choices based on how they could be second-guessed, but think of it this way: Should Europe win, what are the odds that the main American lament is 'What if Keegan had just played himself?' A much more likely frustration would seem to be 'Why in the world did Keegan include himself?'
The Ryder Cup is a month and a half away. Keegan Bradley is still wrestling with a decision. He should stop. Play the next two weeks, then put the clubs away. The captain's enormous responsibility is to put his players in the best position to excel. He can't do that if he's at the range working on his own game, too.