Bradley named surprise 2025 US Ryder Cup captain
Bradley named surprise 2025 US Ryder Cup captain
Keegan Bradley has won one major and six PGA Tour events since turning professional in 2008
wildcard picks for Rome, with Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler selected despite being lower down the rankings.
Bradley was being filmed at home for the Netflix documentary Full Swing when Johnson phoned to tell him he would not make the team.
His disappointment was obvious, as he said: "I’m thinking about the Ryder Cup every second of every day."
In an earlier interview with Sports Illustrated, Bradley said he knew there was "a big risk" he would not be selected.
Thomas, who was 15th on the qualifying list, had previously had a successful pairing with his good friend Jordan Spieth, who was eighth on the list and also selected by Johnson, who was criticised after the defeat for fostering a "boys" club.
"The thing is, those guys are close. They're not just PGA Tour-close, they're close friends," Bradley said.
"If you take golf out of the equation, they're legit close friends. You have your close friends as a golfer and then you have your close PGA Tour friends, and a lot of the time your close friends aren't on the Tour."
Former Ryder Cup player: check. Major winner: check. Keegan Bradley ticks the two qualifying criteria the USA usually demands of its Ryder Cup captains.
But the appointment of the 2011 US PGA champion still comes from way out of left field. And some.
Bradley has always been regarded as an outsider. An idiosyncratic character, not deemed sufficiently a team player to earn a captain's wildcard for the last Ryder Cup despite his persuasive form.
It was an omission more down to personality than play. Now he is regarded as the man to galvanise the Americans to win back the trophy lost so comprehensively at Marco Simone last year.
His two appearances for the US were on losing teams despite his own impassioned performances.
Bradley will be 39 by the time of the contest, the youngest US captain since a 34-year-old Arnold Palmer was a playing captain in 1963, but he hardly carries the same stature.
Bethpage next year will be a place for cool heads amid an expected bear-pit atmosphere. But Bradley has a combustible streak as we witnessed in a bust-up with Miguel Angel Jimenez at the WGC Matchplay a few years ago.
"He'll start a riot," one observer claimed in the wake of this appointment.
That is probably stretching it, but for the US to go with someone who does not even posses experience as a vice-captain is an extraordinary gamble.
Bradley did win respect for the dignified way he accepted his non-selection for the last match. But no-one would have predicted it would pave the way for him to take charge of the US quest to win back the Ryder Cup.
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