Could Keegan Bradley Not Picking Himself For Ryder Cup Galvanize His Team?

Some may have been shocked that Keegan Bradley didn’t award himself with a captain’s pick for the U.S. Ryder Cup team when he announced his six captain’s picks on Wednesday morning at the PGA of America’s headquarters in Frisco, Texas.

The 39-year-old could have taken a spot on the team because, after all, he stood at 11th in the U.S. Ryder Cup team standings through last week’s Tour Championship. His top six players in the standings were already secured.

But instead he chose Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young, Ben Griffin, and Sam Burns.

So what will result from the captain’s deference to his players in this decision? 

Time will tell, but for now it seems the players appreciate the way Bradley's putting the team first.

“I think that's just how he's kind of approached this entire captaincy is he wants to do whatever is best for the team,” captain’s pick Justin Thomas said in the Ryder cup teleconference on Wednesday. “He wants to communicate everything as well as he possibly can. I know he's gutted, and I think all of us are gutted for him, but at the same time, I would say him leading us to a victory will be cooler than any experience he could have as a player, and that's probably what he feels like is best for us. So we have all the faith in the world, and we don't doubt him for one second for that.”

Bradley says the last 48 hours leading up to making the picks were not stressful at all as he had made his decision well before that. Bradley did give a small look behind the the curtain on what the timeline was for his overall plans to potentially play looked like.

“I never really considered playing until after (winning at the) Travelers,” Bradley said. “Then that was really on the table for a while. But I really was interested in being the best captain that I could be, and ultimately I felt like I was really comfortable with the guys, like extremely comfortable, and I feel like I can best serve the team this way.

“I don't care if I play, don't play, as long as we win on Sunday. There's no outcome that-that’s the only thing I care about.”

And it’s perhaps from this sentiment that golf journalist Kyle Porter penned a well-timed post on X about this ‘big boy’ decision from Bradley to avoid picking himself.