Questions about The Ryder Cup.
Keegan should play. But can the U.S. put up a real fight?
On Sunday, Keegan Bradley won the Travelers Championship in dramatic fashion, hitting an absolute dart on the 18th hole to set up a birdie to edge out Tommy Fleetwood, who crumbled and went +2 over the last three holes to lose his best chance at finally winning a PGA event. This is worth talking about in several ways, but the more interesting conversation for me has to do with the Ryder Cup. Bradley, of course, was the shocking choice to be Captain this year at the 2025 Ryder Cup, held at Bethpage Black. The reason it’s shocking is that – as we saw last weekend – Bradley is still not just playing golf, but very competitive golf. Whether one can be a player-captain is kind of fascinating, and it raises a bigger issue of how important the captaincy is. It’s clear that a BAD captain (Zach Johnson, Tom Watson) can detonate a team by idiotic decisions on pairings and the team, but I also think if you get enough talented golfers on a team, they’re all competitive enough that they should win. BUT…Team Europe has shown that they often can win even when they seem like a serious underdog. They spend an insane amount of time doing analytics, team events, etc. – and the US rarely does any of this.
Enough discussion has been spent on that for me to not try and provide additive content myself. However, I’m more interested in a) whether Bradley should be on the Ryder Cup as a player and b) if the U.S. has a real chance to win.
Should Keegan play on the Ryder Cup?
Keegan famously not only played in the 2015 Ryder Cup but was so upset about the loss at Gleneagles that he hasn’t unpacked his bag, which sits in his closet almost assuredly upsetting his wife and making many of us wondering just how funky the clothing inside must be at this time. This was shown on the Netflix documentary Full Swing two years ago when Zach Johnson snubbed Keegan in favor of his “boy J-Twizzler” Justin Thomas. Commence the cringe.
The US team was never in the mix, and while Thomas was not the reason it just was brutal to watch how disappointed Keegan was. Add in the drama of some odd, selfish behavior by players like Patrick Cantlay(who we will get to later) and it stung even more.
For clarity, the top six players in the rankings are automatically on the team. That looks like this today:
The goal of comprising the team is to choose six additional golfers from those not automatically qualified.
As you can see, Bradley is currently 9th. It’s fairly clear that Collin Morikawa above him is a lock, but if someone besides Bradley was making picks, would they really skip over Keegan for someone else? If so, who? You’d have to scroll down pretty far in the rankings to find anyone you’d say HAS to be there. He’s also 7th in OWGR rankings (6th American), so any shenanigans with what counts for the Ryder Cup is even stronger using the Official World Golf Rankings (flawed in their own right). Using Data Golf, Bradley is ranked 8th in the world – taking out non-Americans, he’s 5th.
He’s playing great and it means as much to him as anyone on the entire list. It’s kind of a no-brainer, honestly. The question is whether a captain can also be a player – and according to Bradley, when he was appointed, the powers that be said that was their goal that he’d be both a player and a captain. Were they blowing smoke? Perhaps. Does it matter? It’s a true who can say situation. (I tend to think it will be very hard for Bradley to be thoughtful about when he should be playing, or spend time thinking about the afternoon matches when he’s grinding over a putt in the morning, but this is perhaps what Assistant Captains are for.)
Can the U.S. win?
This is another question entirely. Typically, home teams win in the Ryder Cup, and in theory the course is set up to benefit the home players, to the captains specifications. It’s hard to know how much of that ends up mattering but it could be a tiebreaker. Look above for the US current top-12 and then gander at Team Europe:
The only real questions here are Rasmus Hojgaard, Thomas Detry and Matt Wallace. Hojgaard is just young without a lot of relevant experience. Hojgaard is still very young, while Detry and Wallace are veterans who have never made a Ryder Cup, and each with one lone PGA Tour win. (Wallace has five European Tour wins but he’s last on this list for a reason.) When your bottom half includes Ludvig Aberg, Justin Rose and Viktor Hovland, the team is fairly deep.
The U.S. isn’t in BAD shape, to be clear. First, if you have a team with Scheffler, Xander, Bryson, Justin Thomas and Morikawa, that’s five VERY steady golfers who are among the best in the world. (And props to JT for really getting back into the mix since 2023.) Bradley is a dog, a former major winner and playing some of the best golf of his career. So, we’re at six.
But then … are you really PSYCHED for the Ryder Cup team to feature Ben Griffin, Harris English, Maverick McNealy and Brian Harman? I didn’t even mention Russell Henley who has virtually locked up his spot but … if you can recognize Henley on the street, you have a serious sickness. He’s had four top-10’s in majors, all since 2023, with just as many missed cuts. He’s won five times on the PGA Tour, and three of those were in 2017 or earlier. He’s playing good golf NOW, but as an automatic qualifier, it’s dodgy.
The same is even more true forJ.J. Spaun, whose US Open win virtually sealed his spot. These are guys who deserve their automatic bids, but I’m not sure if they are true advantages come September.
Of the remaining four in the current top-12, I can’t think of a worse course fit than Bethpage Black for Brian Harman. For all that is holy, we can consider him out? For the rest, let’s evaluate them along with the other contenders.
Making the argument for each of these:
As shown by the shading, I’d pick Burns, Cantlay and Young from this group.
It’s worth pointing out that I can’t think of three guys I’d probably want to have dinner with less given their public personalities. (I feel like Cameron Young and Sam Burns would just stare off into the distance, while No Hat Pat would talk about distressed assets and how he’s getting a raw deal by the PGA. Off camera, maybe they’re hilarious. I have my doubts.)
That puts 11 guys on the team with one slot left. I really wish someone like Akshay Bhatia was playing better, and maybe he will be in a month or two. Akshay would be a huge spark, has all the length needed for a brute like Bethpage Black, and is still so young he could be part of the future. A guy like Griffen is certainly also playing incredibly well and maybe it WOULD be nice to reward his first chance to make the team. I think the fair, and probably smart choice is to put Griffen on the team.
But … there’s a guy who is ranked on Data Golf - in theory a purely objective look at how golfers are playing and performing - who is above English, Aberg, Lowry, Novak, Young and others who we’ve discussed above. He’s got a LOT of Ryder Cup performance and is close with many players on the team. Yes, I’m talking about our beautiful boy Jordan Spieth.
Is it an idiotic captain’s pick? Absolutely. Is it more of the “buddy ball” that has doomed the US team so often? Once again, absolutely. But … I’m just throwing it out there.
Regardless, this team is certainly talented, but it’s not like the 2021 Whistling Straits team that not only was absolutely dominant, but seemed like a team built for a decade. And in looking at the European squad, it just seems a lot deeper - and they care about this in a way the US team has seemed allergic to for almost the entirety of the last few decades.
I’m still fairly nervous that Team Europe boat races this crew, but I feel better with this team than the current top-12.
The first post of this completely cut off the embedded table. I plead with you Substack, allow for tables to be built within a post!