Ryder Cup fans just lost something special. Now, we may never get it

Was it ever really on the table? 

Was it even feasible? 

How close was it? 

The questions Keegan Bradley faced immediately after not choosing himself as a Ryder Cup captain’s pick were, well, the exact same questions we were all asking at home, or in group chats or in DMs in our work Slack channels. When it comes to the Ryder Cup, more than any other event in golf, the journalists in the room can be a lot like those watching on the couch — we all love a good story. And this one, as the kids like to say, would have done numbies.

Ratings would have been higher. The secondary market for tickets — already massively inflated — would have found new heights. There would be more Ryder Cup on your Instagram feed and in your email inbox and around the water cooler. 

And now? It will still be a fantastic, epic, rollicking time. But it won’t quite be what many of use were dreaming about. Golf fans lost something in those captain’s picks Wednesday morning, and we’ll probably never know exactly what it was.

For that, we can thank Bradley himself. If he’s as good of a captain as he is an actor, his team will win. The decision that he bandied about in the media as the “biggest” of his career — whether or not to select himself with a captain’s pick — was already set in stone “a while ago,” Bradley said.

“We weren’t scrambling at all,” he added.

Well, pal, the rest of us were! And for good reason. Because for as chaotically extra as the Ryder Cup is on its own, and as gloriously capitalistic as it has become for the PGA of America, the one thing that draws eyeballs to the event is golf in its rawest form. Nerves you cannot replicate, even in the final group of a major. Angst that simply doesn’t exist in stroke play. Strains of disdain, if only temporary, that don’t arise in this game of gentlemen. 

More human nature oozes out of the trappings of a Ryder Cup than anywhere else in the game. That’s why I believed for months that it was a lock — Bradley would call his own number. Because the nature of an elite professional golfer is to believe in your ability to hit the shot, regardless of the lie. It’s an obligation of mindset atop the game — you can do anything with a club in your hands. It contradicts Bradley’s DNA, during the best golfing year of his life, to hand the baton to someone else, but here we are. The world of optimized lineups, defensive shifts and, in this sport, setting up golf courses to play to fractions of an advantage, took over years ago. In the process we sacrificed an element of freewheeling in pursuit of overthinking. 

One thing you wouldn’t have to think long about: Would Seve Ballesteros have selected himself? 

Undoubtedly. Phil Mickelson would have, too. They would have drooled at the prospect of being a true puppet-master.

Tiger Woods grabbed the opportunity at the 2019 Presidents Cup, and then he went down to Australia and handed out daily lessons to golfers half his age — as well as those of us watching back home past midnight. What Woods did that week remains one of the most underappreciated aspects of his legend, mostly because it took place in the wee hours in the United States. Were it to have unfolded on Long Island in the setting September sun, it would have been so iconic that Bradley would have wanted a chance to replicate it. 

Instead, he had no choice but to observe how American captains have been treated when a Ryder Cup goes awry. Tom Watson was dragged by Mickelson in 2014. Jim Furyk was dragged by Patrick Reed in 2018. Zach Johnson was dragged — online and in person — by American golf fans who found his leadership to be lacking. You can’t blame a historic over-thinker in Bradley for trying to avoid those fates with the path of least resistance. 

But you can’t blame us for mourning it, too, at least for a week. A playing captain would have been a lesson for everyone about what elite pro golfers are really capable of. Or what they just can’t handle. It hasn’t happened in more than 50 years, and now it feels like it never will. 

The author welcomes your comments at sean.zak@golf.com.