Keegan Bradley’s Ryder Cup dilemma? It comes down to 1 simple question

After a year-plus of constant chatter, of daily nonstop back-and-forth, U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley said his group chats went silent for Tour Championship weekend, the final audition of the year.

“We sort of put everything on hold the last couple days,” Bradley said. “I think they were trying to leave me alone. But we’ll get in touch with them and get our final decisions together.”

The reality is that Bradley already was alone, no matter what his vice captains said or didn’t. He’s in charge. Keegan Bradley, U.S. Ryder Cup captain can decide whatever he wants, especially now that Keegan Bradley, prospective U.S. Ryder Cup player, has done enough to merit a pick. For now, all the golf world can agree on is one thing: He’s in a hell of a pickle.

“I think he’s got one of the most difficult decisions anyone has ever had to make,” Collin Morikawa said earlier this week. “He is one of the best Americans as of right now. But I truly do not know where his head sits, and I don’t want to be in that position.”

And that was before Bradley played inspired golf for the final three rounds, shooting a tournament-best 64-63 on Friday-Saturday that he paired with two even-par rounds to finish T7, the end of an admittedly grueling PGA Tour campaign.

“I would say for me, this is the proudest season I’ve ever had,” Bradley said after a rollercoaster round that saw him get within a shot of the lead, fade with a water-ball on 15 and finish with a birdie and a relieved grin. “My rookie season I won twice with a major. That’s up there. But this was my favorite of all of them. I was just dead tired today. I’ve never felt like that on the golf course before. I was just exhausted.”

“I don’t think you can do it”

The question is no longer whether Bradley deserves the spot; he handled that with his year-long play plus beating most of the field at East Lake. But there have been explicit doubters, too, with one ex-Ryder Cup captain suggesting it would be the worst decision ever while Rory McIlroy, the leading player on the European side, made it clear last week that he thinks the role of player-captain is just too much.

“I don’t think you can do it,” McIlroy said, citing a wide range of commitments from media to pairing-picking to speech-writing that would distract a player-captain from both halves of his dual role.

What complicates matters is that McIlroy also thinks Bradley is more than good enough to be on the team.

“I definitely think he’s one of the best 12 American players right now,” McIlroy said. “That’s why everyone is so interested and it’s such a compelling case, and I’m just as interested as everyone else to see how it all plays out.”

Bradley ceded McIlroy’s point last week (“he might be right”) but pushed back slightly harder at the beginning of this week, asking ESPN’s Matt Barrie a spicy rhetorical: “How does he know? Has he ever done it?”

“The biggest decision of my life”

Bradley has been candid throughout the process about just how agonizing his Ryder Cup limbo has been. After all, Bradley is among the Americans who care about this event the most, and his last few years have been a rollercoaster. In 2023 he was a heartbreaking snub, left on the outside looking in for the U.S. side that lost in Rome. And in 2024, when he was named captain, it was a surprising but inspired choice and a tremendous honor, but one that came with an interesting subtext: the PGA of America’s selection of Bradley implied that they didn’t think he’d make the team.

When he made the Presidents Cup team in the months that followed, it was a harbinger of the difficult decision to come. And now, in 2025 that decision is on Bradley’s doorstep; he’s not a top-six auto-qualifier but he’s likely inside everybody’s top 12. It’s a dark irony that if anyone else on earth were Ryder Cup captain, Bradley would be a lock.

“It is going to be controversial either way but I am ready for it,” Bradley told the Guardian. “This is the biggest decision of my life.”

Bradley added, both in that interview and in several others throughout the week, that the decision has been weighing on him, that it’s been extremely difficult, that he’s eager for this week to be over.

You could argue that Bradley’s admissions about the weight of balancing player-captain duties this season should answer his own agonizing question: If it’s this distracting, surely it would be simpler just to pass on this playing opportunity and pick from the stable of pros — think Sam Burns, Maverick McNealy, et al. — playing essentially at his same level?

But you could just as quickly make the point that Bradley serving as fiery player-captain would be an asset, a source of inspiration that would galvanize the American side and the American crowd. It would be a dream come true. It would be the type of alpha-dog move we celebrate across sports. It would be the ultimate example of a pro betting on himself.

One simple question

If there’s one mistake Bradley could make — and this is a trap American leadership has fallen into before — it would be trying to make everybody happy. That’s impossible, for one thing. It also misses the point. If Bradley’s team wins on American soil, he’ll be a hero. If they win with him as player-captain, he’ll be an all-time Ryder Cup legend. If they lose at home? Whether Bradley plays or not, he and his team will be skewered. Sure, perhaps the skewering will be slightly more pointed if Bradley plays and plays poorly. But there’s not much room for nuance in Ryder Cup reactions.

“I’m sure they’ve been talking behind my back as I’m out there,” Bradley said of his vice captains. “I know they have a separate chat without me. I’m sure they have some of their opinions that they want to tell me what they think.” That’s nice lip service, and of course he cares what they think. But Bradley knows he’ll get the credit or the blame, which means he’s the one who needs to live with the decision.

“I think no matter what decision that I make here, I could have gone the other way easily, no matter what,” Bradley said post-round on Sunday, admitting that he still wasn’t sure which way he was leaning. His competitors for final playing spot fared well at East Lake, too, after all: Cameron Young (T4) and Sam Burns (T7) are alongside him in the conversation and finished within a shot. Nobody is easily eliminated.

“The only thing I care about is on Sunday of the Ryder Cup, that we win the Ryder Cup,” he said. “Then I’ll know I made the right decision.”

That’s high-pressure. It may also be freeing, because it means a complex year-long decision really does come down to a simple question:

Does he think he’ll give the U.S. team a better chance to win by playing?

Just because it’s simple to ask doesn’t mean it’s simple to answer, of course. Bradley can’t simulate how he’ll feel on that first tee or on that 18th green. But to his credit, he knows the decision is his and his alone.

“What I’ve done throughout my entire career is really lean on other people for advice and calling people and asking them,” Bradley said. “In this instance, there’s no one to call.”

It’s tempting to say that this — the deciding — is the hardest part. In reality it only gets tougher from here. The prep, the pressure, the play. Bradley just has to decide how much weight he wants loaded onto his shoulders.

And then, either way, he has to find a way to win.

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