KEEGAN BRADLEY was not the PGA of America’s first choice to catch 2025 US Ryder Cup team that will try to go the trophy from Europeans to Bethpage Black next month. For years, Phil Mickelsonwho for the first time tried for the new YawkERS with its inspired race in its US Open 2002 completion in Bethpage, was everything, but a blockage to take on the role. But then together came Liv and Mickelson’s defense from the establishment of golf and, with it, the need for a new Skipper.
Tiger Woods? Work was his if he wanted it. But after dawn for months for the decision, Woods determined in May last year that he was too busy with his PGA Tour policy board role meeting Parenting tasks and responsibilities to give a captain Ryder Cup the time and attention he sought.
But that didn’t mean that Woods would be completely withdrawn from the process, starting with him expressing his views on who MUST Be the captain. When a US PGA executive proposed Woods the external idea of ​​the box of Bradley’s appointment For the post, Woods thought Bradley was “a great choice”, a person close to the captain’s election process told me earlier this week.
This respect works two ways and is materialized in Woods playing a major advisory role for Bradley over the past year. “He’s consulting,” the team source told Woods. “And I know he feels like he is part of Keegan’s decisions and how he is thinking about it, and Keegan has been very respectful of this. Without giving (Woods) a big role, I think he was balanced and appropriate. He has been a kind of informal adviser or Dutch uncle.”
Such an opportunity to choose the Woods brain came earlier this year when Bradley and Woods were paired in Pro-member seminole In South Florida, an exclusive one-day event that brings many of the best players in the world every year with shiny names from the business world and beyond. But Woods was not the sole font of wisdom in the group. Playing with them was Shane Battier, the former NBA -star who spent the college years at the University under the tut of legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski. Bradley listened carefully as Battier spoke about the tactics and methods of creating coach K team he used to inspire his players and gain their loyalty and trust.
Woods has not yet captured a Ryder Cup team, but he poisoned a team of the Presidents Cup in 2019, when he spent one of his four captain’s own choices. This self-selection made Woods especially suitable to advise Bradley on the decision that, before Wednesday, was sitting for months on Bradley’s shoulders as a main weight: Should he name herself in his team? Doing this would be protected given the brilliant shape of Bradley this season. But the possible weaknesses of wearing two hats were also not difficult to see. Woods could be associated with Bradley’s confirmation, who made Bradley consult Woods “A Ton” on the issue, Bradley said in the July open championship. Bradley added, “During this process, he has been one of the most useful people I had.“
If Bradley has impressed Woods, the opposite also seems to be true. In relation to Bradley’s Wednesday press conference In Frisco, Texas, in which he announced Chooses his wild postcard And easily explained his decision to give up on himself, Woods sent a text to a person near the team. Inserting the message: “Our son simply suppressed him. This was an amazing oppressor.”
It was. Bradley was composed and prepared. He offered the color where he could (“this broke my heart not to play. Really did”) while defending another intel (since his golf, Michael Jordan, could appear in Bethpage, Bradley said, “I will not talk about it.”) Bethpage, “), so he is right to be right.
America’s PGA officials knew that they were potentially putting Bradley in a difficult connection when they asked them to capture when he was still in or near the top of his game. Of course, this is exactly what happened. He played like him in 2025-winning the travelers’ championship and marking five more Top-10th conclusions for his captain’s decision to tease. “I think we put it in a difficult place,” the source near the team said. “We knew it at the time. He knew at that time.” And as the year played, the source added, “Maybe it couldn’t have been a tougher place.”
Any regrets from decision makers? None, the source said. “He has done whatever we hoped he would do in terms of leadership and transparency and inclusiveness and type of everything. And he is doing it with a handful of iron, by the way. He has made a lot of tips, but he is certainly making decisions.”
When Bradley accepted the captain, he was with his acceptance a little a lonely wolf on the tour. Through much of his career, he made him a point to avoid engaging with his opponents in the tournament and lived “in the shadows”, as he said on Wednesday. He would grind in the range, play his round and then retrieve in his hotel. He believed to make friends, He told cnn Last year, “it would hurt me somehow.” Recently, though – and especially during his captain – Bradley’s perspective has fallen.
“One of the things he talks about a lot, which I think is significant,” the team’s source said, “is how this generation of players are an ever -rooted type for each other and are friends, or their wives are friends, and they are by law, you know, if Jordan does not win, he is getting a little for him, he is getting a little. The one who is the most beloved, who is loved, who is dear to him, the one who is falling in love with him, the one who is in love with him, the one who is the following.
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