Smylie Kaufman thinks Keegan Bradley may make a ‘huge’ call as he suggests major winner could miss his Ryder Cup team

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Keegan Bradley would probably love nothing more than for one of the contenders to make his Ryder Cup team to go on and win the Tour Championship to help make his decision next week an easier one.

Keegan Bradley already knows half of his team for the Ryder Cup with Scottie Scheffler, J.J. Spaun, Xander Schauffele, Russell Henley, Harris English and Bryson DeChambeau qualifying automatically.

There are some names in contention who fans would be stunned to see not feature. Justin Thomas is seventh in the standings and has been something of a talisman for the team in recent years.

Meanwhile, Ben Griffin has won twice on the PGA Tour in 2025. And his fightback after a nightmare start on Sunday at the BMW Championship was almost as impressive as any of his other performances this year.

But Bradley is inevitably going to face some tough decisions.

Keegan Bradley backed to consider leaving major champion off his Ryder Cup team

The likes of Cameron Young and Chris Gotterup have won in recent weeks. Meanwhile, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns and Brian Harman are no strangers to the Ryder Cup stage.

Interestingly, speaking on The Smylie Show, Smylie Kaufman suggested that he would expect Burns to be involved at Bethpage. With that, he speculated that there could be a real shock with one of the more experienced options available to Bradley.

“I think Burns is going to make the team. It’s just hard for me to figure out, because Cam Young, is his data good enough? I made the point that sure, it looks like he’s figured it out over the last two or three months or so, but before, at the beginning of the year, the numbers were really, really poor for him. The ball-striking wasn’t great. Is this a pop putting year? Is the putting going to hold up in the Ryder Cup? Because it sure wasn’t there the last couple of years. The Cam Young one is a really big question mark to me. I could see why people right now are like how can you leave him off the team? Well, which one are you going to get? Are you going to get the Cam Young who’s been playing really well lately? Or is he going to regress to the mean a little bit with the putter? Is the ball-striking going to hold up? I have big question marks over whether Cam Young will be on the team,” he said.

“Morikawa and Cantlay, I think, that is going to be so difficult to call one of those guys if they’re not on the team. But I think you could make the case that one of them doesn’t make the team, and that to me, is the huge storyline going into the picks next week, whether one of those guys will be left off the team.”

How Collin Morikawa and Patrick Cantlay have performed at the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup

What is remarkable how similar the records of Morikawa and Cantlay have been in recent years, both at the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup.

Both men made their Ryder Cup debuts at Whistling Straits in 2021 and kept their places for the next three team events.

They contributed the same number of points in Wisconsin and at Royal Montreal during last year’s Presidents Cup.

But it is Cantlay who has the slight edge overall.

However, if Bradley is deciding between the two and was hoping that their past records would help, he is set for real disappointment.