SUTTON, Mass. (AP) — Keegan Bradley knew the stakes when he accepted the Ryder Cup captaincy.
“You win, it’s glory for a lifetime. You lose, it’s ‘I’m going to have to sit with this for the rest of my life,’” he said Monday in his first public comments since leaving Bethpage Black last month. “There’s no part of me that thinks I’ll ever get over this.”
A two-time Ryder Cup competitor, Bradley was appointed captain of the U.S. team last year and brought a stacked squad to face Europe on New York's Long Island. Although they were favored to win at home, the Americans fell into a 11 1/2-4 1/2 hole heading into the final day – the biggest Sunday morning deficit in modern Ryder Cup history.
“You put so much into it, and you have all this planning, and the first two days went as poorly as we could have ever thought,” said Bradley, who needed to step outside the tent and gather himself before he addressed the team on Saturday night. “It was pretty emotional. It was sad, to be honest.”
The Americans won 8 1/2 points from the 12 singles matches to make it seem close.
Bradley has accepted the blame for some mistakes, including a setup that combined with the rain to make the notoriously difficult course more manageable. Others have pointed to his pairings and even the decision to leave himself off the team.
“Since the Ryder Cup to now has been one of the toughest times in my life,” Bradley said at media day for the Travelers Championship, where he is the defending champion.
“I really would enjoy playing in one more. I don’t know if I’ll get the chance,” said Bradley, who at 39 would have been older than all but one player, Justin Rose, on either team this year.
“This effing event has been so brutal to me. I don’t know if I want to play. No, I do,” Bradley quickly corrected himself. “It’s such a weird thing to love something so much that just doesn’t give you anything.”
Bradley said he is still trying to emerge from the “Ryder Cup fog” and get back to being just one of the top players on the PGA Tour. After being named captain, he won the 2024 BMW Championship, and his win in Hartford this June gave him more individual victories in that span than any American other than Scottie Scheffler.
A different captain might have picked him for the U.S. team.
Although there were moments when he wished he'd made himself the first playing Ryder Cup captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963, Bradley said he knows he made the right decision.
“I’ll forever wonder and wish that I had a chance to play there," he said. “The first practice day, I was out on the tee, and I was watching the guys walk down the fairway all together, and I said: ‘I wish I was playing. That’s what it’s all about. I’m missing out.’
“By the second or third day I was like ‘It’s a good thing I’m not playing,’ because I was so physically exhausted. ... Good thing I didn’t do it, because it would have been bad," Bradley said. “I just didn’t think I could do both jobs.”
Even so, spending the last year as the Ryder Cup captain gave Bradley an experience few can claim. At tour stops across the country — before the players themselves knew if they would be on the team — he felt the love from American fans.
“I didn’t expect the support,” he said. “In the history of the game — back to Bobby Jones, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus — I don’t know if any of them got to experience what I experienced this year.
“I got to experience something in the game of golf that I don’t think anyone’s ever experienced: where I’m the Ryder Cup captain but also competing at a very high level, and winning tournaments, and contending in tournaments. And it was really incredible.”
