The ‘interesting’ answer Keegan Bradley gave during his Ryder Cup press conference which surprised Smylie Kaufman

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There was no shortage of talking points following Keegan Bradley’s press conference in which he announced his six captain’s picks for the Ryder Cup at Bethpage next month.

Of course, the big news emerging from Keegan Bradley‘s Ryder Cup press conference was his decision to not pick himself to play in New York. Bradley had arguably done enough to earn a spot on the team.

However, the 39-year-old perhaps decided that the demands of being a playing captain would have simply been too much.

With that, Bradley opted to pick Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Cameron Young, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns.

What Keegan Bradley said at his Ryder Cup press conference which surprised Smylie Kaufman

No one would have been surprised to see Thomas picked. However, it is surely fair to say that there were debates to be had about the other five names who complete Team USA.

Morikawa and Cantlay have not had the best years, but have good experience in the Ryder Cup. Meanwhile, Griffin and Young are rookies, but have won in recent months. And Burns has stepped his game up in recent months and is statistically the best putter on the PGA Tour this season.

Bradley was asked about what data he used to help him decide which players to pick. And speaking on The Smylie Show, Smylie Kaufman admitted that he was somewhat taken aback by his answer.

“He asked the question about data and stuff that we typically like to look at and then how they evaluate who makes the team or who doesn’t make the team. So all the stuff that we talked about, about why Keegan should be on the team, it’s like well, he was one of the best Americans in the last three, six, nine months and we have all these reference points we can refer to,” he said.

“And he summed it up with the data and basically asking Keegan, ‘hey, were you looking at that? What exactly were the places you guys were pulling from to make these decisions?’ And he gave an answer that surprised me a little bit, but I thought he was going to say, ‘yeah, we really heavily relied on the stats guys and this is how we ended up picking the team was primarily through their opinions’. And he actually went a little different way than I thought he would and said we really like to see how these guys finish on the leaderboard at the end of the week. And that surprised me a little bit because you can kind of poke a hole in the argument there with the Collin Morikawa thing, with the Patrick Cantlay deal.

“Maybe Morikawa would be much more of a data set pick, looking at how good his iron game is, his tee to green game is, how accurate he is and how good he could be in foursomes. So maybe it’s not quite for all of the players that he was referring to, but in a sense when you look at all of these picks, you see what all these players have kind of done down the stretch and seen how consistently they’ve been inside the top 15 of the leaderboard really the entire summer, the American flags on the board have been incredible. I think he was more referring to that in his answer, which I thought was an interesting question and an interesting answer.”

Where each of Keegan Bradley’s captain’s picks rank for strokes gained on the PGA Tour in 2025

Ultimately, it would have been a bigger surprise had Bradley opened up on the metrics which led him to pick the six players he opted for.

Both teams will have their strategies – and they will be a lot more advanced than most of us can comprehend. Neither will want to give away many secrets, particularly when the Europeans are still yet to finalise their team.

So while Bradley is right to discuss form, that is surely one of several factors which will have been considered. How they suit Bethpage and how they will cope on that stage will have also been looked into.

When it comes to the basic strokes gained numbers, it does appear that the captain has not made any huge errors, though Bradley and Maverick McNealy – the two players inside the top 12 in the qualification standings not on the team – perform well in that category.

It is probably fair to say that not one of the six players made such a compelling case that there would have been uproar if they were not selected. But it also seems that Bradley has arguably put together the best team available to him after deciding that he could not perform both roles.