Fans of Ryder Cup just lost something special. Now, we can never get it

Was it ever really on the table?

Was it also feasible?

How close was it?

Questions immediately faced Keegan Bradley NO His choice as choosing a captain of Ryder Cup were, well, the same questions we were all asking at home, or in group conversations or in DMS on our slow channels. When it comes to the Ryder Cup, more than any other event in Golf, journalists in the room can be many like those who look at bed – we all love a good story. And that, as children want to say, would have done Numbies.

The estimates would be higher. Secondary market for tickets – already massively inflated – would have found new heights. Would have More Ryder Cup In your Instagram food and in your email box and about the water coolant.

And now? It will still be a fantastic, epic, fast time. But it will not be what many of uses were dreaming. Golf fans lost SOMETHING In those captain’s elections Wednesday morning, and we will never know exactly what it was.

For this, we can thank Bradley ourselves. If he is as good for a captain as he is an actor, his team will win. The decision he joined in the media as The “greatest” of his career – If he was to choose himself by choosing a captain – it was already placed in the stone “a little while ago,” Bradley said.

“We were not colliding at all,” he added.

Well, Paul, others were! And for good reason. Because for so chaotically extra While the Ryder Cup is on its own, and as glorious capitalist as it is for America’s PGA, the only thing that attracts the eye to the event is golf in its raw form. The nerves you cannot repeat, even in the last group of a major. Angst that simply doesn’t exist in the shock game. Types of contempt, if only temporary, that do not arise in this game of masters.

More human nature departs from the footsteps of a Ryder cup than anywhere else in the game. That is why I believed for months that it was a jam – Bradley would call his number. BECAUSE nature One elite professional golf player is to believe in your ability to hit the goal, despite the lie. Next to an obligation of thought at the top of the game – you can do nothing With a club in your hands. She opposes Bradley’s DNA, during the best year of golf of his life, to hand over to someone else, but here we are. The world of optimized formations, defensive shifts and, in this sport, setting golf courses to play in fractions of an advantage, took years ago. In this process we sacrificed an element of freewheeling in pursuit of overturning.

One thing you should not think of long: would he have chosen Seve Ballesteros himself?

Undoubtedly. Phil Mickelson would have too. They would have been immersed in the perspective of being a true puppet master.

Tiger Woods grabbed the opportunity at the 2019 Presidents Cup, and then he went down to Australia and taught daily lessons for the players half his age – as well as those of us looking at home at midnight. What Woods did that week remains one of the most underestimated aspects of his legend, mainly because it happened in the Wee hours in the United States. Had it been unfolded in Long Island in September sunset, it would have been as iconic that Bradley would have liked a chance to repeat it.

On the contrary, he had no choice but to observe how American captains were treated when a Ryder cup goes bad. Tom Watson withdrew from Mickelson in 2014. Jim Furyk withdrew from Patrick Reed in 2018. Zach Johnson withdrew – online and personally – by American golf fans found his leadership missing. You cannot blame a historical thinker over Bradley for trying to avoid those fortunes with the path of the slightest resistance.

But you can’t blame us even to mourn it, at least for a week. A playing captain would have been a lesson for everyone about what is really capable of the Elite Pro Golfers. Or those they just can’t handle. It has not happened in more than 50 years, and now it feels like it will never happen.

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