Captain Keegs doesn’t care what Rory or anyone else on Team Europe has to say.
PublishedAugust 28, 2025 2:15 PM EDT•UpdatedAugust 28, 2025 1:47 PM EDT
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Keegan Bradley surprisingly didn’t use one of his six Ryder Cup captain’s picks on himself when he rounded out the 12-man U.S. team set to take on Team Europe at Bethpage Black in September.
With Bradley opting out of serving the role of playing captain, it means we’ll never know if the doubtful comments Rory McIlroy made about the potential endeavor had any truth behind them, but that doesn’t mean what the five-time major winner said is just water under the bridge.
Speaking to the media ahead of the BMW Championship in mid-August, McIlroy was asked why he believes it would be so difficult for a Ryder Cup captain to also play for his side in the biennial event.
McIlroy listed off what sounded more like built-in excuses than actual challenges.
“I just think the commitments that a captain has the week of — you think about the extra media that a captain has to do, 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 — just 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,” McIlroy said.
It’s obviously true that Ryder Cup captains have an endless list of responsibilities, but claiming that writing a speech and preparing for the opening ceremony would have any impact on how Bradley would perform inside the ropes is questionable, at best.
Keegan Bradley opted to only serve as captain for the U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2025. (Photo by Anthony Behar/PA Images via Getty Images)
After naming Sam Burns, Ben Griffin, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young, and Justin Thomas as his six captain’s picks, Bradley was asked if there was a part of him during the decision process in which he wanted to prove McIlroy wrong.
His answer did not disappoint.
“I just am not worried at all about what they do or say. I care about our team. I’m not quite sure how he would know if it’s not possible. No one has ever done it really,” Bradley said. “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. Even that would be difficult.
“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, and 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.”
As Bradley alluded to, Palmer was the last Ryder Cup captain to wear both hats as a playing captain all the way back in 1963.
Bradley’s slightly backhanded response to McIlroy is only a preview of the jabs both sides will be tossing each other’s way through the press over the coming weeks before tees are put in the ground at the end of the month.
