Keegan Bradley complains about Bethpage Black and says one part of the setup is wrong, ‘not what we wanted’

Add as preferred source on Google

Keegan Bradley will unfortunately go down as one of the worst US captains in the history of the Ryder Cup.

There is no room for sentiment in elite level sport and US Ryder Cup captain Bradley being criticised is more than fair.

Bradley has made one unforgivable decision after another at Bethpage this week.

The US captain had the big advantage of being able to set Bethpage Black up exactly how he wanted.

And unfortunately for him, he got that part of his captaincy completely wrong as well.

Europe have been better than the USA at the Ryder Cup in every single department this week.

And Bradley quite simply must take the lion’s share of the blame for that.

Keegan Bradley complains about Bethpage Black Ryder Cup setup

Bradley floundered during his Saturday evening press conference.

He looked like a deer caught in the headlights and seemingly had no idea about what has gone wrong for the US team this week.

The man from Vermont even suggested that the greens were not in a condition which suited his team.

He said: “Oh man, the greens were not what we wanted. They were super soft, the greens were great, they roll great, but you’re actually better off in the rough to a bunch of these pins. Sometimes when our guys were in the rough I thought that’s actually great so it doesn’t spin off the green. I’ve never seen Bethpage greens play this soft ever, even when we’ve played here when it has rained, chips shots are spinning backwards.”

Bradley is acting like a man who’s under huge pressure and is fully aware that he has messed up badly.

Everything he says now is just making the situation for him worse than it already is.

Keegan Bradley’s shock comments on Bethpage greens were symptomatic of a greater issue

Bradley made a whole bunch of jaw-dropping remarks during his press conference on Saturday night.

However, his remarks about the speed of the greens took the cake.

He said: “I think historically we play faster greens on the PGA TOUR than they do. Obviously when we go over to their British Open, the greens are considerably slower than what we play on in an average week. I think like British Open, they are around 10, 10 and a half, maybe 11. For us, when we play faster greens, they generally quicken up as the week goes on in the weather’s good. That’s normally what happens.“

Historically, Bradley has a point. The greens on the PGA Tour are significantly quicker than the surfaces on the DP World Tour.

However, here’s the problem, and it’s baffling that Bradley has missed it. Every single European player competes on the PGA Tour nowadays. So his point about the slower greens made absolutely no sense.

It’s like the 39-year-old read the playbook on how to win a Ryder Cup from 1991.

He was quite obviously dismissive of the data available to him, and instead chose to go down an archaic route in preparing his team to face the Europeans.

Bradley has got so many things wrong at the Ryder Cup this week, and his belief that slower greens have favoured the European side proves just how badly he has misjudged things this week.