Keegan Bradley wasn’t the PGA of America’s first choice to captain the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup team that will try to wrest the trophy from the Europeans at Bethpage Black next month. For years, Phil Mickelson, who first endeared himself to New Yawkers with his spirited runner-up finish at the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage, was all but a lock to assume the role. But then along came LIV and Mickelson’s defection from the golf establishment and, with it, the need for a new skipper.
Tiger Woods? The job was his if he wanted it. But after agonizing for months over the decision, Woods determined in May of last year that he was too busy with his PGA Tour policy board role, TGL duties and parenting responsibilities to give a Ryder Cup captaincy the time and attention it required.
But that didn’t mean Woods would retreat from the process entirely, beginning with him voicing his views on who should be captain. When a PGA of America executive proposed to Woods the outside-the-box idea of appointing Bradley to the post, Woods thought Bradley was “a brilliant choice,” a person close to the captain-selection process told me earlier this week.
That respect works two ways and has materialized in Woods playing a key advisory role to Bradley over the last year. “He’s being consulted,” the team source said of Woods. “And I know he feels like he’s a part of Keegan’s decisions and how he’s thinking about it, and Keegan has been hugely respectful of that. Without giving [Woods] an outsized role, I think it’s been balanced and kind of appropriate. He’s been sort of an informal advisor or Dutch uncle.”
One such opportunity to pick Woods’ brain came earlier this year when Bradley and Woods were paired in the Seminole Pro-Member in South Florida, an exclusive one-day event that annually brings together many of the world’s best players with shimmery names from the business world and beyond. But Woods wasn’t the only font of wisdom in the group. Playing alongside them was Shane Battier, the former NBA star who spent his college years at Duke University under the tutelage of legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski. Bradley listened intently as Battier spoke of Coach K’s team-building tactics and methods he used to inspire his players and earn their loyalty and trust.
Woods hasn’t yet captained a Ryder Cup team, but he has helmed a Presidents Cup squad, in 2019, when he expended one of his four captain’s picks on himself. That self-selection made Woods particularly well suited to counsel Bradley on the decision that, before Wednesday, had sat for months on Bradley’s shoulders like a lead weight: Should he name himself to his own team? Doing so would be defensible given Bradley’s excellent form this season. But the potential downside of wearing two hats was also not hard to see. Woods could relate to Bradley’s conundrum, which led Bradley to consult with Woods “a ton” about the matter, Bradley said at the Open Championship in July. Bradley added, “During this process, he’s been one of the most helpful people that I’ve had.“
If Bradley has been impressed by Woods, the reverse also appears to be true. In the wake of Bradley’s Wednesday press conference in Frisco, Texas, at which he announced his wildcard picks and coolly explained his decision to forego himself, Woods sent a text to a person close to the team. The thrust of the message: “Our boy just crushed it. That was an amazing presser.”
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It was. Bradley was composed and prepared. He offered color where he could (“It broke my heart not to play. It really did”) while protecting other intel (as for whether his golf pal, Michael Jordan, might appear at Bethpage, Bradley said, “I’m not going to speak for him.”) We won’t know for certain if this moment is too big for the 39-year-old Bradley until the final putt has dropped Sunday evening at Bethpage, but thus far he seems to be pulling all the right levers.
PGA of America officials knew they were potentially putting Bradley in an awkward bind when they asked him to captain when he was still at or near the top of his game. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. That Bradley played as well as he did in 2025 — winning the Travelers Championship and notching five other top-10 finishes — made his captain’s-pick decision excruciating. “I think we put him in a tough spot,” said the source close to the team. “We knew it at the time. He knew it at the time.” And as the year played out, the source added, “it probably couldn’t have been a tougher spot.”
Any regrets from the decision-makers? None, the source said. “He’s done everything we hoped he would do in terms of leadership and transparency and inclusiveness and kind of everything. And he’s doing it with an iron fist, by the way. He’s taken a lot of counsel, but he’s certainly making the decisions.”
When Bradley accepted the captaincy, he was by his own admission a bit of a lone wolf on Tour. Through much of his career, he made it a point to avoid engaging with his opponents at tournaments, and lived “in the shadows,” as he put it Wednesday. He’d grind on the range, play his round and then retreat to his hotel. He believed making friends, he told CNN last year, “was going to hurt me somehow.” More recently, though — and especially during his captaincy — Bradley’s perspective has flipped.
“One of the things he talks about a lot, which I think is significant,” the team source said, “is how this generation of players are kind of always rooting for each other and are friends, or their wives are friends, and they’re legitimately hoping, you know, if Jordan’s not winning, he’s rooting for JT or Scottie or whoever. That’s legitimate, and I think that’s very different than what he grew up with, which was sort of a little more every man for himself.
“I think that’s changed him. I think he likes this [approach] more and appreciates it.”
How real are those bonds? The Ryder Cup will reveal that. It always does.
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