On Monday, U.S. captain Keegan Bradley was at the site of his greatest 2025 triumph, the Travelers Championship, speaking for the first time since his biggest loss of the year, the Ryder Cup. And the U.S. team’s defeat at Bethpage Black dominated the conversation.
At a media day for next year’s Travelers tournament, Bradley opened up about the “emotional” toll his Ryder Cup loss has taken on him, professed that he’d never get over it, and even questioned whether he would want to play in “this effing event” ever again.
Bradley reveals post-Ryder Cup has been ‘toughest times in my life’
Even before Bradley accepted the captaincy for the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup team, it was clear just how important the biennial event was to him. Look no further than his emotional reaction to being snubbed for the 2023 U.S. team, famously filmed for Netflix’s “Full Swing”.
He well knew, and explained regularly in public ahead of the tournament, that a Ryder Cup win at Bethpage Black would have been celebrated for decades and might have defined his career. On the flip side, captaining the team to a loss on U.S. soil would haunt him forever.
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He reiterated that on Monday, in his first comments to reporters since leaving Bethpage Black on the losing side.
“You win, it’s glory for a lifetime,” Bradley said on Monday. “You lose, it’s ‘I’m going to have to sit with this for the rest of my life.’”
With the outcome now settled, Bradley was brutally honest about how difficult living with the reality of losing has been over the past few weeks.
“There’s no part of me that thinks I’ll ever get over this,” Bradley admitted. “Since the Ryder Cup to now has been one of the toughest times in my life.”
The U.S. captain went into more detail, explaining how hard it was to watch the Europeans dominate the first two days of the Ryder Cup considering the years of planning and hard work he’d put in to prepare.
“You put so much into it, and you have all this planning, and the first two days went as poorly as we could have ever thought,” he said. “It was pretty emotional. It was sad, to be honest.”
But there was at least one positive Bradley took away from his Ryder Cup captaincy. Having been among the best players in the world when he was chosen as Ryder Cup captain, Bradley got the unique experience of traveling from Tour event to Tour event with U.S. fans cheering him on along the way.
“In the history of the game — back to Bobby Jones, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus — I don’t know if any of them got to experience what I experienced this year,” Bradley explained. “I got to experience something in the game of golf that I don’t think anyone’s ever experienced: where I’m the Ryder Cup captain but also competing at a very high level, and winning tournaments, and contending in tournaments. And it was really incredible.”
Bradley says Ryder Cup has been ‘so brutal to me’
In the lead-up to the Ryder Cup, the biggest question buzzing around the golf world was whether Bradley would pick himself to play on the U.S. team. He finished 11th in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings and was among the top-ranked Americans in the Official World Golf Ranking.
Bradley ultimately decided against it, believing his focus should be on his duties as captain. But on Monday Bradley revealed that during practice rounds at Bethpage, he began to regret his decision.
“I’ll forever wonder and wish that I had a chance to play there. The first practice day, I was out on the tee, and I was watching the guys walk down the fairway all together, and I said: ‘I wish I was playing. That’s what it’s all about. I’m missing out,’” Bradley revealed.
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But after a few exhausting days at the Black Course, the U.S. captain realized that being a playing-captain “would have been bad.”
“By the second or third day I was like, ‘It’s a good thing I’m not playing,’ because I was so physically exhausted. … Good thing I didn’t do it because it would have been bad.”
At 39 and playing some of the best golf of his life, Bradley could easily be in the conversation for playing on the 2027 U.S. Ryder Cup team, or even qualify automatically for the squad.
But when asked about his Ryder Cup future, Bradley’s first reaction was to question whether he even wanted to play in the event anymore given how “brutal” it has been to him.
“This effing event has been so brutal to me. I don’t know if I want to play. No, I do,” Bradley said. “It’s such a weird thing to love something so much that just doesn’t give you anything.”
Eventually he came around to the idea.
“I really would enjoy playing in one more,” Bradley admitted. “I don’t know if I’ll get the chance.”
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