Keegan Bradley should not have been the captain of the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup team. That is not an opinion based on hindsight or a reaction to the Americans losing to the Europeans at Bethpage Black, it is a simple fact.
Bradley was not the first choice for the captaincy by the PGA of America, the operators of the U.S. team. The first person the PGA called for the job was Tiger Woods, and it’s no mystery as to why his name was the first one circled.
Not only is Woods arguably the greatest golfer of all time, but he’s semi-retired from playing, is beloved in New York, and the scene of him leading the Americans into battle in the largest Ryder Cup ever would have been borderline romantic.
Woods said no and turned down the offer due to other commitments he had already made, saying, “there’s only so many hours in the day.” What those more important commitments were, your guess is as good as anyone else’s.
Woods declined the PGA of America’s offer well over a year in advance of the 2025 Ryder Cup, but this didn’t stop the PGA from slamming the panic button, leading it to make the pivot of all pivots and calling Bradley to offer him the captaincy.
Keegan Bradley deserves some blame for the 2025 Ryder Cup, but certainly not all of it. (Photo by Michael Reaves/PGA of America/PGA of America via Getty Images)
In the defense of the PGA of America, for which it only deserves one iota, its previous strategy of selecting captains was not working, given that the U.S. had lost eight of the last 11 Ryder Cups heading into 2025.
Offering Bradley the gig was certainly different. Desperate, but different.
When you sit back and look at Bradley’s résumé, however, nothing about it screams ‘this is the guy who will lead the U.S. to glory at Bethpage.’
For starters, Bradley is still playing a full-blown PGA Tour schedule at 39 years old. Past that, his lone major championship victory came at the 2011 PGA Championship. He has never been a Top Five player in the world, was on the losing side of the two Ryder Cups he was a part of as a player, and had zero experience as a vice captain in previous Ryder Cups.
The PGA of America looked past all of that and offered him the captaincy, clearly prioritizing Bradley’s fiery personality and his love for both the country and the event itself. It’s also not far-fetched at all to say that Bradley being left off the 2023 Ryder Cup team and how that was documented on Netflix’s ‘Full Swing’ played a role in the PGA’s decision to offer him the role.
The simple fact is that the PGA of America offered the most important captaincy of the Ryder Cup’s 98-year history to someone with no experience, who was also trying to play his way onto his own team, and came awfully close to using one of his own captain’s picks on himself after finishing 11th in the U.S. team standings.
In the sense of a knee-jerk reaction to Bradley being named captain, it was admittedly exciting, but from 30,000 feet, it was a risk centered around a state of panic. In every way, it was the perfect representation of just how lost the PGA of America is when it comes to the Ryder Cup as a whole, and how the systems and processes don’t need to be changed, but destroyed.
This isn’t to say that Bradley was set up for failure by the PGA of America, he wasn’t, but it wouldn’t be fair to say he was set up with the best odds of success, either.
Keegan Bradley was tapped to be captain when he shouldn’t have been. (Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images)
The PGA of America is too large an organization, juggling far too many projects to give anywhere close to enough attention, or care, to the Ryder Cup.
With the U.S. losing nine of the last 12 Ryder Cups, we have long passed the point where a 365-day per year, Team USA body needs to be formed to put the best possible foot forward for the event. A collection of golf and non-golf minds alike have to come together, and with American pride still existing beyond what some in the media may tell you, it shouldn’t be too difficult a task.
You might think something like that would exist when we’re talking about an event where the United States (population 340 million) takes on the entire continent of Europe (population 744 million), but it does not. We no longer live in the 20th century, when the U.S. won 24 of the first 33 editions of the event. The U.S. has been embarrassed in four of the last six Ryder Cups, changes at every level must take place ahead of 2027.
Europe celebrates its Ryder Cup victory at Bethpage Black in New York. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)
As for one final note on Keegan Bradley, no one in their right mind can criticize him for accepting the job of captain. Taking on that challenge on that stage on home turf is something anyone, other than Tiger Woods, apparently, would understandably take on if afforded the opportunity.
Bradley made plenty of questionable calls when it came to course setup, strategy, and pairings in his team’s eventual 15-13 loss at Bethpage Black. Team Europe also put together a borderline anomaly of a performance over the course of the first two days that no mix-up of U.S. pairings could have truly contended with.
It’s back to the drawing board for the U.S. with two years to go until a trip to Adare Manor for the 2027 edition of the Ryder Cup, and hopefully, an entirely different collection of individuals and a new strategy will bring a needed and new approach.
