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Keegan Bradley didn’t take Team USA’s Ryder Cup loss at Bethpage Black well.
He led the American team to a demolition on home soil. The final scoreboard only flattered a performance marred by disastrous decisions throughout the team events.
Bradley said he was heartbroken by the result all year, and he likely still hasn’t emotionally recovered from Bethpage Black. He adores the event, but the Ryder Cup doesn’t love him back, as a player or as a captain.
Because of this, Bradley has been a sympathetic figure after his captaincy ended, but this goodwill might have gone up in flames after what he was claimed to have done during Sunday’s action.
Keegan Bradley claimed to have berated rules official at the Ryder Cup
On Sunday, Team USA mounted a comeback in the singles event to give the European team a fight. For a moment, it looked like they were going to pull off the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of certain defeat.
Amid the American momentum shift, a rules controversy involving Justin Rose in his match against Cameron Young led Bradley to make a rules official never want to work at the event again.
Speaking on the Musings on Golf podcast, PGA professional Chandler Withington told the story of how Bradley treated rules official Jeff Kiddie:
“He’s a national rules official. He travels around the country doing assistant championships and club pros, and seniors and women’s, and the carrot is always that you get to officiate the Ryder Cup.
“So he gets put out on the first match on Sunday, which was Cam Young and Justin Rose, and if you go back and watch it again, on 14, the par three, Rose hits one short right, and it ricochets off the hill, goes right down the path and up against the chalet.
“Nowhere to drop it, can’t go anywhere, and you’ve got to get back in play. So Jeff is trying to get Justin back in play, but there’s nowhere to put it. It’s rolling outside the relief area, you can’t microwave the process. Over here, over here, place it, place it, moving, moving.
“Then they finally get him back in play, but now there’s TIO, temporary immovable obstruction, so now we’ve got to go over here. So both captains by now, because it’s the first match, and it’s right as Team USA is making a push. It’s all going red here. Momentum’s coming, but now we have this traffic jam behind the first match. Both captains right up to it.
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“Jeff’s sweating, but he’s doing his thing. And he said ‘I’ve gone back and watched it ten times, and there’s nothing I can do to get ten seconds off that process.’ It’s just what it is.
“Anyway, they get Rose back in play and he actually hits a nice pitch shot to like three feet and he halves the hole. Keegan Bradley goes over to Jeff and goes, ‘The f–k are you doing up here? You’re f—-g up out whole deal man, we’re making this comeback and you’re up here f—–g around?’ Just undresses him.
“They ride down 15, Keegan rides up to him in the fairway he goes, ‘You see what you f—–g did back there? We’re going to win this f—–g this and you’re f—–g it up over here’. Undresses him again. Gets him at the green, again, third time.
“This is the PGA of America Golf Professional of the Year of 2023, a man we hold on a pedestal. Probably doesn’t know who Jeff is. But you’ve got to undress one of our own three times because of your ineptitude over the first few days?
“So Jeff Kiddie’s like, between the things that I’ve heard said to the players on Saturday and this, I don’t want to be involved in the Ryder Cup ever again.”
If this story is true, it’s a terrible look for Bradley. The Americans didn’t shower themselves in glory in New York, as the fans’ treatment of the European players off the course and their performance on it showed. But this behaviour from Bradley takes it to a new level of shame.
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