It has been more than a decade since Team USA emerged from a home Ryder Cup feeling the need to rip everything up and start again, but that is exactly what is happening now with Keegan Bradley’s men suffering a defeat at Bethpage Black.
For the second Ryder Cup in a row, a brilliant fightback on Sunday from those in red, white and blue made the scoreline a lot more respectable than it had any right to be.
Team USA were outstanding in the singles at Bethpage Black. However, Keegan Bradley‘s men ended up coming up short. The damage was done over the first two days, with Bradley making a number of bizarre decisions.
Bradley was given such a tough job by the PGA of America. He was the man tasked with picking up the pieces from Zach Johnson‘s calamitous tenure. But he had to juggle that with being one of the world’s best players on the PGA Tour.
The debate now is where do the team go from here ahead of Adare Manor in 2027.
Keegan Bradley’s hopes of remaining captain for the 2027 Ryder Cup assessed
It is more than three decades since Team USA won on European soil. Scottie Scheffler was not even born when Tom Watson oversaw a victory at The Belfry in 1993.
Obviously, Europe have benefitted from keeping Luke Donald in place for a second Ryder Cup. But it seems that some are not expecting Bradley to get a similar opportunity.
Speaking on Dan on Golf, Dan Rapaport was asked whether he can see any chance of Bradley staying on.
“No, no I don’t. I don’t think you can run it back after you lose,” he said. “The more interesting question is does Luke Donald want to run it back again? And just the fact that that’s being talked about is indicative of how much the Ryder Cup has changed.
“It used to be that the captaincy was a reward for a life well lived in golf. The Americans never went back to the well because someone else deserves a chance to be the Ryder Cup captain. It was almost like getting put in the Hall of Fame. Now it’s like what do we do to win this thing? It’s all about winning.”
Keegan Bradley’s decision to not pick himself is under scrutiny after defeat at Bethpage
It will certainly be interesting to see how time impacts how Bradley’s captaincy is reflected upon. There already appears to be a lot more affection for the 39-year-old than there was for Johnson before him.
It is also difficult not to think that any team would have struggled to avoid being trounced by the Europeans over Friday and Saturday at Bethpage.
But Bradley made a number of decisions which look questionable with the benefit of hindsight, including not picking himself to play.
Bubba Watson said Bradley not picking himself was ‘amazing’; believing that it would galvanise his team. And Rapaport has suggested that the skipper was put in a no-win situation.
“I feel terrible for him, because I think he tried to make the right decision. He tried to make the good guy decision. We talked about this in detail before. I think if Keegan Bradley has the resume of Tiger Woods, I think he’s a playing captain,” he said.
“But I think being the first one to do it since Arnold Palmer, and he said himself, ‘it’s very weird being talked about in the same sentence as Arnold Palmer because I’m not Arnold Palmer’. So I think he tried to make the right move, and I think he tried to inspire his team.”
The good news for Bradley is that based on everything that has happened over the last 12 months, there is a really strong chance that he will be involved at Adare Manor – with any captain likely to seriously consider making sure he is playing on their team one way or another.
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