Defeated Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley made a startling admission while reliving the Bethpage experience…
Keegan Bradley is hurting.
“Since the Ryder Cup to now has been one of the toughest times in my life,” Bradley said in his first public appearance since his US team were beaten 15-13 at Bethpage.
“There’s no part of me that thinks I’ll ever get over this.”
With two defeats as a player and one as a captain now on his permanent record, the result has left the 39-year-old wondering if he will ever get to experience victory in the match.
After his debut at Medinah in 2012, Bradley posted a photo of his Ryder Cup-branded suitcase with a promise to not open it until he has been on a winning side. Thirteen years later, it remains zipped up in a closet at his Jupiter home.
“It’s such a weird thing to love something so much that just doesn’t give you anything,” he sighed.
“You win, it’s glory for a lifetime. You lose and it’s, ‘I’m going to have to sit with this for the rest of my life.’”
Bradley’s captaincy announcement was such a shock that the man himself didn’t know he was on the shortlist. The decision was made more bizarre by the fact that he was not only still in with a shout of making the team, but he had also not been involved in the competition in any way since leaving Gleneagles 10 years prior.
And his lack of leadership experience shone during what turned out to be a record-breaking opening two days for Luke Donald’s Europeans.
“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,” Bradley said, before explaining that he spent some time alone on the Saturday night to gather himself before addressing his team.
“It was pretty emotional,” he added. “It was sad.”
The overriding debate in the build-up to the tournament was whether or not he was going to pick himself for the team and be the Ryder Cup’s first playing-captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963. In the end, he decided against it, and even went as far as saying it was never an option. Now, though, he looks back with a sprinkle of regret.
“I’ll forever wonder and wish that I had a chance to play there,” he said. “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.’ By the second or third day I was like, ‘It’s a good thing I’m not playing’. I was so physically exhausted.
“It would have been bad. I just didn’t think I could do both jobs.”
Bradley will no doubt get another shot at the captaincy in future. For now, though, his focus remains on making the team for Adare Manor in two years.
“This effing event has been so brutal to me. I don’t know if I want to play,” he said, before sharply correcting himself. “No, I do. I really would enjoy playing in one more. I don’t know if I’ll get the chance.”
Speaking at a media event for the Travelers Championship, where he will defend his most recent PGA Tour title in June, Bradley still managed to find time for the positives of the last two years.
“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,” he said.
“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.
“It was really incredible.”
