Keegan Bradley fretted in his Memphis hotel room, annoyed he had possibly let a huge opportunity slip. With a final-round 71 at TPC Southwind, he had left his fate up to others at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, hovering around the 50th and final spot for the following week’s BMW Championship.
At stake was not only a place in the tournament but qualifying for all eight signature events for the 2025 PGA Tour season. As the newly appointed U.S. Ryder Cup captain, Bradley dearly wanted to be competing in the events where a majority of his prospective team would be performing.
Little did he know he was likely to be one of them as a player.
Bradley ended up securing the 50th and final spot in the BMW Championship, then went on to win it the following week, therefore qualifying for the Tour Championship, which assured him not only a spot in the signature events but all four of the major championships this year.
And while he was 22nd in the Official World Ranking at the time of the BMW last year, it only seemed remotely possible that he’d make a run for his own team.
But Bradley has five top-10 finishes this year including his victory last week at the Travelers Championship. He climbed to a career-high seventh in the OWGR after that victory and ninth in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings, with the top six through this year’s BMW Championship automatically making the team.
From saying that he’d only play if he made the team on points, Bradley has softened that stance—and for good reason. He’s likely one of the 12 best American players at this point, with the Ryder Cup scheduled for late September at Bethpage Black.
So how might this work? How can Bradley, 39, balance the duties of being the Ryder Cup captain and playing? Can he do both? Does he need to assign someone else the duties of being captain?
All of these questions are likely ones running through his mind and his assistants Jim Furyk, Brandt Snedeker, Webb Simpson and Kevin Kisner, as well as PGA of America brass. It makes you wonder about a juicy conspiracy theory that might see Tiger Woods—who turned down the job—involved. (Seems unlikely.) And at the very least it sets up the intriguing possibility of Bradley becoming the first U.S. Ryder Cup playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963.
Here are some things to consider and why it might work.
> The makeup of the team itself has no bearing on Bradley’s ability to play. All of that is being determined now through the BMW Championship, which means there are just seven tournament weeks left to determine the automatic qualifiers.
“As we get closer to the Ryder Cup, things are amping up certainly for sure, but every day we’re working,” Bradley said at the Rocket Classic. “We’re on the chat with the vice captains. Now the team is really starting to take shape and we know a handful of guys that are pretty close to a mathematical lock on the team. We start thinking about partners and formats. Things are definitely amping up.”
> Based on general observations and Bradley’s own words, he’s going to be keenly prepared as a captain, whether he plays or not. He loves the Ryder Cup and it pains him he’s not been on a team since 2014, one of the two losing efforts in which he participated. Being part of last year’s Presidents Cup is also a big benefit. He got to know many of the same players who will be on his team. And Furyk was the captain of that team. Undoubtedly they will go to Bethpage with their pairings determined.
> Furyk is more than capable of taking over any duties while Bradley plays. He was the captain of the 2018 U.S. Ryder Cup team. On the team were several potential or likely members of this year’s team: Justin Thomas, Bryson DeChambeau, Tony Finau, Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed.
He was also the captain last September at Royal Montreal where Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay and Finau were part of a winning team.
Furyk knows the personnel and it’s not like any decisions he would be asked to make are done so alone.
> It is unlikely that Bradley would play both sessions on Friday and Saturday. The order of foursomes and four-ball has yet to be announced, but if you go by what Bradley did at the Presidents Cup, he only played in the four-ball (better ball) sessions, going 1–1 with Wyndham Clark before he won his Sunday singles match. So watching to see what the order is might give some clues if he is part of the team.
It would make sense for Bradley to skip the morning session as the event begins and then prepare his own game for the afternoon while also being privy to any discussions about pairings. But it’s quite possible the first-day lineup will be set no matter what happens, and all the heavy lifting will be done. That also allows Bradley to be involved in decision-making regarding Saturday morning pairings. The only downside? Not getting to see the others play in the afternoon session.
When Palmer was playing captain in 1963, the Ryder Cup was a far different deal. The U.S. was a prohibitive favorite. The event had a different format with six sessions, and Palmer played them all. He went 3–1 in the team matches and 1–1 in singles, which then saw two eight-match sessions. Palmer undoubtedly wasn’t fretting about matchups. The U.S. won 23–9.
In 2019, Woods was the playing captain for the U.S. Presidents Cup, twice partnering with Justin Thomas to win matches and then taking his Sunday singles to go 3–0. The four-day format with only one session on Thursday and Friday makes the playing captain role easier as all the decisions for the day are made. Woods sat out the entire Saturday double team session and the U.S went on to a narrow victory. Could Woods become involved now? It seems more likely that he’d be a voice from afar, as has been the case many times over these team competitions.
An interesting decision for Bradley awaits and it will be a lot easier if he continues to play well. He’s missed the cut, however, in his last five British Opens and it’s not clear yet if he will play after that prior to the FedEx Cup playoffs. He’s got a lot of ground to cover to get into the top six automatic spots, but if he’s seventh or eighth does he dare sit out?
“My whole life every year I was out here I wanted to play on the Ryder Cup team, and then this would be the first year where maybe I didn’t want to,” Bradley said after his Travelers victory. “I just wanted to be the captain and, of course, you know, this is what happens. But we’ll see.
“I’m going to do whatever I think is best for the team. Whether that’s me on the team—this certainly changes a lot of things. I was never going to play on the team unless I had won a tournament and so that’s changed, but we'll see.”
John Deere Classic field improves
It’s good to see the John Deere Classic get a field boost. The tournament on the Illinois border is a throwback small-town tournament that has typically been plagued by a tough date. For years, it was played the week prior to the British Open, and although it put in a place a charter to get players across the Atlantic, it has often been a tough sell.
When the Scottish Open became a co-sanctioned PGA Tour/DP World Tour event, the Deere moved a week earlier on the schedule, and while that has not always been great, this week’s field is one of the Deere’s best ever.
In fact, the X site Nosferatu says that in the last three years, the tournament has moved from the weakest strength of field for a regular event (in 2022) to its projected strongest in the Official World Golf Ranking era.
Among those entered are Jason Day, Rickie Fowler, Max Homa, Sungjae Im and defending champion Davis Thompson.
A possible reason for a better field is the impending end to the PGA Tour’s regular season. Including this week, there are just five more tournaments before the FedEx Cup playoffs begin in Memphis, with just the top 70 in points qualifying.
Fowler, for example, is 73rd in points. Homa is 123rd. Although Homa is exempt through 2028, others are fighting to earn points as the fully exempt cutoff changes to 100 from 125 for 2026. Those spots can still be earned through the FedEx Cup fall events.
More immediate is the playoffs and then qualifying for the BMW Championship (top 50) and Tour Championship (top 30).
Among those on the outside securing a place in all of the signature events next year is Xander Schauffele, who is 55th after a tough year that saw him miss nearly two months due to injury.
British Open spots nearly filled
The Rocket Classic was the last opportunity for PGA Tour players to qualify for the British Open via FedEx Cup points—and nobody took advantage. There were five spots available for the top 20 in points not otherwise qualifying and all are already in the field at Royal Portrush, where the Open will be played in two weeks.
With Sergio Garcia getting a spot via the LIV Golf League standings and two players coming through the Italian Open—Adrian Saddier and Martin Couvra, both from France—there are unofficially 126 players qualified for the 156-man field.
Next week’s Scottish Open will yield three spots for players not otherwise exempt. And 20 will advance through Final Qualifying at four sites on the United Kingdom on Tuesday.
That leaves potentially seven openings and they would come from the Open’s reserve list which is via the Official World Golf Ranking.
There were 17 LIV players entered across the four qualifiers but at least three have withdrawn so far: Abraham Ancer, Paul Casey and Branden Grace. Among those still listed are 2010 U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell, who is attempting to qualify for the Open being played in his hometown.
Garcia admitted Sunday that he was fortunate to be getting the LIV Golf League exemption. Garcia, 45, the 2017 Masters champion, is the leading points earner among the top five through the LIV Golf Dallas event. He hung onto fifth spot after Patrick Reed passed him following his playoff victory.
Since the top four—Joaquin Niemann, Bryson DeChambeau and Reed—were already in the Open field, Garcia got the spot. But only because nobody who had a chance to catch him made a run.
“It’s going to be my second time playing at Royal Portrush, and it’s obviously nice,” Garcia said after his tie for 25th finish in Dallas. “It’s one of the goals that you have at the beginning of the year, to try to play as many majors as you can with the limitations that we get. I didn’t help myself very much the last three months, but I’m glad that I got enough work done in the first third of the year, I guess, in the first part of the season. I’m excited about it, and hopefully I’ll play well.”
Garcia put himself in peril because in the last four LIV events, he failed to earn any points. Only those who finish in the top 24 each tournament gets points and Garcia last did so when he finished third at the LIV Golf Miami tournament the week before the Masters. He also won in Hong Kong earlier this year.
Coming into the week, Garcia was fourth with 78 points and heading into the final round, his Fireballs teammate and fellow Spaniard David Puig was poised to overtake him. Puig was tied for fourth and fourth-place alone was worth 18 points—he trailed Garcia by 17.9 points. A solo or fourth or better, as it turned out, would have earned Puig the spot. He ended up tied for 13th.
Both Puig and Garcia, along with fellow LIV golfer Martin Kaymer, are playing in this week’s BMW International Open in Germany, a DP World Tour event.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Here’s How Keegan Bradley Can Pull Off Being a Ryder Cup Playing Captain.
