With the Tour Championship now in the rearview mirror, many eyes will be on Keegan Bradley this week to see which six players are picked to complete his team for the Ryder Cup.
While it is hard to imagine Luke Donald springing a surprise with his six picks for the Ryder Cup, it does appear that Keegan Bradley faces several more dilemmas ahead of Bethpage.
Nine American players finished inside the top 10 at the Tour Championship. Just two of them, Russell Henley and Scottie Scheffler, have qualified automatically for the Ryder Cup team. That just highlights what a tough task Bradley is going to have.
It was Bradley who received the call to say that he would not be involved at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome. So he will be aware of how difficult some of the upcoming conversations are going to prove to be.
What Ryan Lavner noticed about Keegan Bradley during the Tour Championship
Heading into the Tour Championship, the likes of Cameron Young, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns were outside the top 12 in the qualification standings.
Young won the Wyndham Championship and finished no lower than 11th during the FedEx Cup playoffs. Burns meanwhile, is statistically the best putter on the PGA Tour this year. And Cantlay is someone who thrives in the team events.
Speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Ryan Lavner backed Young and Cantlay to make the team. In his mind, the final spot will come down to Burns and Bradley himself.
And he suggested what he spotted about Bradley at East Lake which makes him think that he has already made his decision.
“If Cam Young is not on this US Ryder Cup team, the system is broken,” he said.
“What more could you possibly need the guy to show? He is a big hitter, he has course experience, he’s proven himself in major championships and on the biggest stages that he can handle, he’s never really backed down in that sort of arena. He just won his first golf tournament in the regular season finale at the Wyndham Championship and he has continued that form throughout the postseason.
“Top 12s in all three playoff events, another good finish at East Lake. To me, Cam Young should be a no-brainer pick and I’m with you: Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Patrick Cantlay, Cam Young. To me, it’s a question of do you pick Sam Burns or if you’re Keegan Bradley, do you somehow make a call to Sam Burns and be like, ‘nope, sorry, I’m picking myself’.
“Listening to Keegan Bradley and again, you were there, you can pick up on certain tendencies, his tone, the manner in which he’s delivering it. To me, it did not sound like whatever was going to happen at the Tour Championship had any bearing on his decision. If you look back over the past two months, Sam Burns has played dramatically better than Keegan Bradley has over that stretch.
“To me, the Keegan Bradley shooting 64-63 in the second and third rounds of the Tour Championship almost seemed to me like a player who had been freed up. A player who had made the decision, we’ll have to see in a month’s time whether it was the right or wrong decision, but he was at peace with it and all of a sudden he could then play the type of golf that Keegan Bradley is obviously capable of playing.”
This week is likely to involve the hardest days of Keegan Bradley’s Ryder Cup captaincy
Lavner’s acknowledgement that Burns has been much better than Bradley in recent months hints that he expects the former to complete the team, with Bradley opting not to be a playing captain.
But it will be such an anticlimax if Bradley chooses to only captain the team. Ever since he was announced as the skipper, so much of the talk has centred around whether he will become the first playing captain since 1963.
Clearly, the dream scenario for Bradley would be to lead his team to victory while also playing. However, he will need no one to tell him what the narrative will be if he takes on both roles and oversees a defeat.
The next few days may be the toughest of Bradley’s tenure. But it will help if he has already made peace with his decision – whatever that proves to be.
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