Keegan Bradley’s shock decision papers over the cracks of his absurd Ryder Cup captaincy

So, after all of that, Keegan Bradley didn’t pick himself.

After winning one of the biggest events on the PGA Tour this year, after climbing to 11th in the world rankings and the Ryder Cup rankings, he didn’t pick himself.

After statistically outperforming multiple members of his own US team to this point in 2025, he didn’t pick himself.

I thought he would, and you did too. He kept to his word from July 2024 when he said he wouldn’t pick himself, despite publicly admitting he was having second thoughts after winning the Travelers Championship in June.

“I grew up wanting to play Ryder Cups. I grew up wanting to fight alongside these guys, and it broke my heart not to play. It really did – but ultimately I was chosen to do a job. I was chosen to be a captain,” he said after choosing Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Cameron Young, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns instead.

Logic suggests Bradley made the correct decision. He can focus on being a captain now, instead of trying to both play and lead against Europe at Bethpage next month.

But you might compare this to taking a long drive from point A to B, deliberately taking wrong turns and backroads, eventually arriving at the destination in an anxious, sweaty state, and then taking credit for it.

The entire process has been chaos.

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Keegan Bradley Captains Picks shocked golf fans

In Frisco on August 27, 2025, at the US captain’s picks summit, Bradley said he was chosen to be a captain.

So why on earth did he try as hard as possible not to be?

After winning one of the tour’s Signature Events featuring the best players in the world two months ago, Bradley revealed that the ex-PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh told him that they wanted him to be the first playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963, when calling to appoint him as captain.

“This changes the story a little bit,” he also said at TPC River Highlands. “I never would have thought about playing if I hadn’t won. This definitely opens the door to play. I don’t know if I’m going to do it or not, but I certainly have to take a pretty hard look at what’s best for the team and we’ll see.”

From the get-go, it was orchestrated chaos and a seed was planted in the Vermont man’s mind that grew bigger just three months before the Ryder Cup would start.

This is someone who has vowed he won’t open a suitcase he was given at the 2012 Ryder Cup until he wins the event. A man obsessed with the Ryder Cup.

“I’ve got to play really well to make the team just as if I wasn’t the captain. I had a very similar year at Rome and didn’t make the team. I have to keep going. I really need to play well this event and then in the Playoffs,” Bradley said after shooting a bogey-free 67 in the second round of The Open Championship.

He supposedly drafted legislation which said a vice-captain could take over if he was a playing member. Europe and Luke Donald obliged. Why not? Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. There were mixed reports about what choice he’d make on the day.

Bradley isn’t going to play, but he quite obviously wanted to and very nearly did. We can applaud Bradley for putting people before himself, particularly rookies Griffin and Young.

But we can’t forget the will-he-won’t-he pantomime that led to this cliffhanger decision, ahead of an event both sets of players would have you believe they desperately want to win.

While the roadshow rattled on each week on the PGA Tour, with each of our eyeballs scanning the leaderboard looking for Bradley’s name, there was nothing but clarity and a clear goal for Team Europe.

Two months after the 2023 Ryder Cup started, Donald was named as the 2025 captain. So good was his performance in Rome and as well-respected as he is in the team room, the blue and gold couldn’t snap him up quickly enough.

Europe aren’t perfect, but they have won 10 of the last 14 Ryder Cups. They didn’t adopt a strategy of ‘appoint now, worry later’. Bradley was five captain’s picks deep into his media session one month before the Ryder Cup, and we still didn’t know if he would be a playing captain or not. We still didn’t know what on earth was going.

ALSO: Sam Torrance: It isn’t possible to be a playing captain at the Ryder Cup

There is a reason Justin Rose wasn’t chosen or entertained as the European captain for the 45th Ryder Cup matches, despite approaching the stage of his career where captaincy is on the cards.

He is in his twilight at 45 years old, but is still a world-class operator who has earned a spot in the continent’s dressing room for the seventh time.

There was never a chance of Europe putting itself in this spot. Is it because Europe care more than America about the Ryder Cup? Probably.

For those who yawn at this regularly harped trope, Bradley and Team USA’s handling of the entire thing is Exhibit A. He was named the Ryder Cup captain while ranked as one of the best players in the world, landing him with the agonising task of telling his contemporaries that they hadn’t made his team.

Bradley was the victim of this very ordeal in 2023 when US captain Zach Johnson left him out. But thanks to the Netflix cameras being present at that exact moment in both Bradley’s and Johnson’s households, Bradley seemed to harness enough sympathy from that moment to be named captain himself.

Thanks to Full Swing, I am now writing this column.

Common sense probably prevailed, but the trials and tribulations on the way aren’t worthy of praise.

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What do you make of the Keegan Bradley captains picks? Which players would you have chosen? Would you have appointed Keegan Bradley Ryder Cup captain in the first place? Tell us on X!