The inquest into the 2025 Ryder Cup has seemingly started up again, with Keegan Bradley breaking his silence on Team USA’s loss at Bethpage last month.
There are plenty of lessons which need to be taken from what happened in New York. Team USA were completely outplayed over the first two days, with Europe taking an 11.5-4.5 lead into the singles.
Luke Donald‘s men were able to win just one match on Sunday and lift the Ryder Cup. Unsurprisingly, Keegan Bradley has come in for criticism.
Why Keegan Bradley has been absolved of blame after the Ryder Cup
Bradley admitted his regret over how Bethpage was set up. Meanwhile, some of his pairings left fans baffled, with Bradley using Collin Morikawa and Harris English twice seeming particularly strange.
Bradley said he would struggle to get over the Ryder Cup loss. It does not help that he became the first captain since 2012 to lose the event on home soil.
But some think the 39-year-old should not be so hard on himself. Speaking on Dan on Golf, Dan Rapaport suggested that what he spotted on social media after the Ryder Cup helped highlight just what a tough task Bradley was facing due to the culture within Team USA.
“The more I think of it, the more I think this is a player issue. And I don’t think the reason the US missed all those putts was because of Keegan Bradley. But when you’re the leader on the team, you take the credit when they win and you take the blame when they lose. I said this a lot this week, I think it’s the players,” he said.
“I think the Ryder Cup captaincy is one of the more overblown positions in our sport. Your job as the Ryder Cup captain is to get your players to care, and I think Keegan did all he could. At a certain point, all the players have to look inward. Just looking at the way the Europeans talk about the Ryder Cup, the way they act at the Ryder Cup, I think the fans fired up the European team big time. I think them being so personal, it made them feel like it was us against the world, and it was, if you were on the grounds, it did feel like it was Europe against the world.
“But I also look at the posts afterwards and a lot of the US players were posting, ‘yeah, it was great to represent my country, thank you to everyone at the PGA of America’. There was no ‘this is heartbreaking, we can’t keep losing this’. I don’t know that Keegan can just snap his finger and make the players care more, not that they weren’t trying hard, but it certainly seemed like the European players lean into the team aspect of it more. The Americans dominated in singles, they’re clearly much more comfortable in singles. When they’re playing in foursomes, it’s almost like, ‘I don’t really know what to do with my hands’. You saw these Europeans and they were grabbing each other’s faces, they were going crazy the whole time. There was just more of a team spirit that comes from the players.”
How Scottie Scheffler reacted to Team USA’s loss at the Ryder Cup
Of course, social media only tells part of the story. Ultimately, a lot of what would have been said behind closed doors will never see the light of day.
But it is interesting that Scottie Scheffler’s post on social media backs up Rapaport’s point.
The world number one – who lost four of his five matches – described representing his country as a great honour. He also congratulated Team Europe on their victory.
Obviously, he was never going to be particularly controversial. And you could never suggest that he did not care. Scheffler was left in tears after one loss in Rome in 2023. But he now needs to step up and show that he is ready to inspire his team to victory in two years.
There definitely seems to be a key ingredient which Team USA are yet to stumble upon. Having said that, Bradley had more than a year to try and work out what he could do to succeed where several captains had failed.
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