When Keegan Bradley won the Travelers Championship in June, it was almost impossible to not think that he was nailed on to become the Ryder Cup’s first playing captain since 1963.
There was always a real possibility that Keegan Bradley was going to be a playing captain at the Ryder Cup. Bradley was inside the top 20 in the world rankings when he was announced as the USA skipper for Bethpage.
A win at the BMW Championship last year showed that the demands of captaincy were not going to completely derail Bradley’s playing form.
And when he won the final signature event of this year at Travelers Championship, it seemed that Bradley had booked his ticket to make his own team.
Keegan Bradley told he no longer needs to pick himself on the Ryder Cup team
The 39-year-old is currently inside the top 12 in the Ryder Cup standings. With that, it is surely fair to say that Bradley having to juggle both roles is the one big negative against the idea of him being a playing captain in September.
What does help if Bradley does decide not to play is the fact that some of the American players further down the standings are starting to find form.
And speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Ryan Lavner suggested that there is now little need for Bradley to take the gamble of being a playing captain.
“I think overall this is why I thought it was so silly to crowd Keegan Bradley after he won that signature event over Tommy Fleetwood,” he said.
“At that point there were still three months to go in the process and claiming just because Keegan Bradley moved inside the top 10 in the world rankings, just because he had moved in the top 10 in the US team standings and just because he won a signature event, it should not have put him automatically on the team and then in a position to be a playing captain.
Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
“Think about what has happened in the three months since then. Chris Gotterup has arrived, he won the second strongest regular season event on the PGA Tour in the Scottish Open and followed it up with a third place finish in his very first Open Championship. Also had an opportunity to win the 3M.
Wyndham Clark has played better of late, to at least get himself in the conversation if he can play well in the play-offs.
“Now you have Cam Young winning the Wyndham Championship. I think there is probably 10 players on that US team who are all but locks. Barring some sort of injury, barring their form completely falling off the face of August, I would put 10 players on that team. Then you have a conversation where it’s a Cam Young, Chris Gotterup, Jordan Spieth, Sam Burns or Keegan Bradley himself.
“Is Keegan Bradley that much of a difference maker that you have to put him on that team? I would argue no.
“And I think Chris Gotterup now, in addition to a resurgent Cam Young, I think really makes the decision actually easier for Keegan Bradley to step away, be the captain and let some of these other players assume the playing role full stop.”
Why Keegan Bradley has been backed to make his Ryder Cup return
The problem for Bradley is that there are plenty of reasons why he should get a pick for the Ryder Cup.
He has won in each of the last four years on the PGA Tour, while his previous appearances in the Ryder Cup were extremely impressive – particularly alongside Phil Mickelson in 2012.
Whether you can put any stock in Bradley’s previous Ryder Cup displays is up for debate. But he is definitely playing extremely well, and he will inspire others with his passion.
In fact, Trevor Immelman previously insisted Bradley should be playing, despite the difficulties he will face as a captain. That says a lot considering that Immelman knows how demanding captaincy can be.
“In my opinion, he is for sure one of the top eight American golfers in the world and he should be playing. But I just know from my experience captaining one of those teams in the Presidents Cup, golly, it would be so hard to be captain, all of those responsibilities, and then play at the same time. So they have an interesting next couple of months ahead and a lot of decisions to make as to how they’re going to put their squad of 12 together,” he said.
Bradley is in a really tough position. If the US lose, whatever decision he made on his own role is going to come in for intense criticism.
