‘Really tough decision’ – US captain Bradley will not play in Ryder Cup

2025 Ryder Cup

Dates: September 26 through September 28th, 2018 Bethpage Black, New York

After having a change of heart, American Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley made the decision to skip his first game against Europe next month.

The 39-year-old completed his 12-strong team by adding six wildcard picks to Bethpage Black’s schedule on September 26 and 28 and kept the public guessing until Wednesday when he announced the public’s guesses.

Bradley once declared that he was prepared to take on both roles before reevaluating his decision.

He claimed that being the best captain possible was “broke my heart not to play.”

If Bradley had been the team’s captain, he almost certainly would have been named as a player because of his strong performance this year, which included six top-10 finishes and a win in the Travelers Championship.

Instead, he chose Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Cameron Young, Patrick Cantley, Sam Burns, and Scottie Scheffler, JJ Spaun, Xander Schauffele, Russell Henley, Harris English, and Bryson DeChambeau as automatic qualifiers.

Arnold Palmer, age 34, was the youngest US captain since 1963 when Bradley was named the 11th overall and 11th overall.

“This was a very difficult choice,” he said. This year, I was playing at a certain point,” Bradley said.

Trump, a regular golfer and avid golfer, will attend the first day of the Ryder Cup.

Trump will be able to observe the captain taking the leadership position he was surprisingly given in July of last year rather than observe Bradley compete on the course.

Bradley won the Travelers Championship by one shot over Tommy Fleetwood from England in June.

He placed himself in the top 12 of the US Ryder Cup rankings after coming in seventh place at the Sunday Tour Championship.

Europe now has to play their cards. On September 1st, Luke Donald, the captain of the European team, will reveal his six picks.

Luke Donald, the European captain I’m sure of, will probably have disappointed you because he and his team-mates had to worry about both playing and captaining.

Here, common sense prevailed. We discussed before how challenging it would be to perform both jobs and do them in the necessary way in order to win the Ryder Cup.

Bradley has since come to understand that he always believed he was the captain, not the player. When he won that important win in June, things did change a little, but ultimately it was better to carry out his duties and not play a player.

After being defeated by Rory McIlroy to win the Players Championship in a play-off, JJ Spaun won the US Open and became the first major in the process.

In 2024, Xander Schauffele won the US PGA and Open. Although he extended his run of not missing a cut to 58 events, which is the longest since Tiger Woods set the record at 142, he has had a quieter year in 2025.

Over the weekend, Russell Henley and Harris English re-signed their spots.

Bryson DeChambeau, a LIV golf player, qualified for the tournament after completing six top-10 finishes in the majors in the course of 17 months.

The heartbeat of our team was described by Captain Bradley as “the guy who was born to play Ryder Cups, especially at Bethpage Black,” who was also a two-time major winner and had finished seventh in the Ryder Cup rankings.

Collin Morikawa, a two-time major champion, was eighth in the standings after becoming the second-best player in the world. His “golf resume speaks for itself,” according to Captain Bradley.

class=”ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3″>Ben Griffin, 29, makes his Ryder Cup debut after being chosen as the third captain. In the Ryder Cup rankings, he placed ninth.

He won two victories and 10 top-10s this year, only behind Scottie, according to Bradley.

Cameron Young, a 29-year-old New York native who placed 14th overall, was the rookie choice that Bradley chose for his fourth pick. Young claimed it would be “so special” to compete in his native state.

The team events “mean everything,” according to fifth-pick Patrick Cantlay, who finished 15th overall in the race to join the team.

There are several other notable names who haven’t been chosen, aside from Bradley’s decision not to play.

The 2023 Open champion, Brian Harman, was presumably overlooked because he deemed himself a lackey for Bethpage Black.

Additionally, Jordan Spieth, the former world number one who has collaborated with Justin Thomas in the past, is unmoved.

Brooks Koepka, a five-time major champion who is currently touring with LIV Golf, and Maverick McNealy, a former US Open champion, do not make the team.

After posting seven top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour in the 2025 season, McNealy, who is 19th overall, just ahead of Cameron Young and Patrick Cantlay, intended for a debut.

It was a “very, very difficult call,” according to Bradley, to omit 29-year-old McNealy.

Given that Bradley placed 11th in the US Ryder Cup qualifying table and, by consensus, is currently one of the top ten golfers in the country, the decision came as a surprise.

Just six weeks after being chosen as the skipper for this 45th edition of the biennial event, he won the prestigious BMW Championship on the PGA Tour in August.

As the player-captain’s momentum grew, he added another victory in June of the same year that he also recorded six top-10 finishes. However, his inclusion as a player would have reawakened the US team’s ambiguous circumstances.

Bradley, who had won twice in 2023 and narrowly missed out on being chosen for captain, did not make the first-choice selection.

After Tiger Woods, who is 15-times major champion, declined, he accepted the responsibility.

The PGA of America, which oversees the US Ryder Cup team, made the bold choice to appoint him as captain this time, which appeared to be changing.

Before taking on the top position, recent captains Zach Johnson, Jim Furyk, and Davis Love III each had at least one other experience as assistant captain.

In contrast to the team’s other assistants, Kevin Kisner and Gary Woodland, Furyk is one of Bradley’s vice-captains, while Brandt Snedeker and Webb Simpson are also on board and have Ryder Cup experience.