MONTREAL — It’s 361 days until Sept. 26, 2025 when Keegan Bradley will lead a to be determined 12-man U.S. side against Team Europe at the Ryder Cup at Bethpage.
Bradley, who notched the deciding point on Sunday in the U.S. side’s 18½-11½ victory over the International Team at the Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal, called competing in his first international team competition in a decade a huge benefit to his captaincy.
Until his victory at the BMW Championship, one of three FedEx Cup events, he was planning to learn the ropes as an assistant captain to U.S. Presidents Cup Captain Jim Furyk.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done without being here,” Bradley said. “I learned a lot from Jim and Tabitha this week. It was the best job I’ve ever seen done as captain and the captain’s wife.”
As soon as Bradley was announced as U.S. Ryder Cup captain in July, he said he’d like to be a playing captain if he were to make the team, which would make him the first to do so since Arnold Palmer in 1964. But after experience the crucible of simply being a player and watching Furyk in the role of conductor, Bradley expressed his doubt whether he can do both jobs.
“After going through this, I don’t know if I can, actually. I’d love to but I can’t imagine doing Jim’s job and playing. I don’t know how you can physically do it. I will have great assistants; Brandt will be one of them. I’m going to cross that bridge,” he said without finishing his thought and concluding, “I’m going to have to do some special stuff to get on that team.”
Asked again during the winning team’s press conference, Bradley reiterated what he had said outside on the 18th green in the aftermath of his win in singles.
“I would love to join these guys and play next year. I don’t know how that would ever be possible, but seeing what Jim did, seeing how nervous I was today to play. But I’m going to push that down the road. Like I said, if I make the team on points, I’ll consider playing, but outside of that, I won’t do that because this is really important to me next year,” he said.
“I don’t care about my personal gains of playing in the tournament, I only care about winning the Ryder Cup,” Bradley added. “I think the best way to do that is to let these boys play and let them do what they do. I don’t see it happening, but we’ll see.
“I think it’s arguably one of the most important Ryder Cups the United States has ever had. We’re going to go in there ready to play, and we’re going to go in there to win the Ryder Cup.”
Bradley may have bypassed assistant captain duties at the Presidents Cup to focus on being a player last week, but he still got an inside look and head start on what it takes to be a winning captain.
“We’re going to copy a lot of what Jim Furyk did this week. He set a culture here for us, and we’re going to carry that over into Bethpage, and I hope a lot of these 12 are on that team,” Bradley said.