Passion play? Keegan gets the nod
'Shocking' Bradley captain choice deviates from norms; Olympic heartbreak AGAIN for Luiten
Keegan Bradley gets introduced as Ryder Cup captain (Jennifer Pottheiser/PGA of America)
Left field — that is a prevailing view of many when they are asked about where the ascendency of Keegan Bradley from 2023 rebuffed captains pick to 2025 Ryder Cup captain has come from. The captain choice is as aberrant as the Green Monster in left field at Fenway Park, where Bradley’s beloved Boston Red Sox play.
The chaotic selection reveal — which was communicated haphazardly by the PGA of America on Monday after an inadvertent release of the selection by organization’s announcement at NASDAQ headquarters in New York City a day before the official press conference — seemingly speaks to the amazement of the pick to lead Team USA against the Europeans at Bethpage Black in 2025.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be more surprised of anything in my entire life,” Bradley said of getting the nod. “I had no idea. It took awhile for it to sink in.”
Everyone calls Bradley — the 2011 PGA Championship winner in his major debut — passionate about the Ryder Cup and gutted when he received the call from Team USA captain Zach Johnson that he would not be one of the six added as captain’s selection for Rome in 2023.
“I find it best to go in a different direction this year,” Johnson told Bradley — No. 18 in the world at the time and 11th on the Ryder Cup points list — when he called him to tell him he wasn’t going to be included on the 2023 U.S. team.
Now it seems the PGA of America is going in a different direction as well with the 38-year-old Bradley — who has played on only two Ryder Cups, both losses in 2012 at Medinah and 2014 at Gleneagles — chosen to take the reins from Johnson after a decisive five-point defeat by the Americans in Rome (16½-11½).
“Interesting decision,” Billy Horschel said of the Bradley captain selection. “I think Keegan, obviously he’s passionate about the Ryder Cup, he cares a lot about it, always plays with a lot of passion. But I thought his time would come in the next six or seven years, so maybe there’s some guys that could have been picked beforehand.”
While Horschel admitted he was not privy to the closed-door discussions on Ryder Cup captaincy and supports Bradley as a captain, he wonders about the reasoning of picking a player who still has gas in the tank to make a team when others like Matt Kuchar, Webb Simpson or Stewart Cink were available.
“I would be curious what their thought process was behind it,” Horschel said of the decision to take an active player (ranked 19th in the Official World Golf Ranking and 37th in the current FedEx Cup standings) who still has a reasonable chance to make the U.S. team versus fading veterans like Kuchar, Simpson or Cink.
The answer may be that the different direction includes the possibility of a playing captain.