Issue No. 95 | July 12, 2024

Hey,

I wanted to jot down a few thoughts about the Ryder Cup news from this week after several days of processing and thinking about Keegan Bradley being named the captain.

One of my favorite things about this newsletter is that I don’t feel like I have to fire off takes seconds or minutes after hearing a piece of news for the first time. That is the modern media world, and everyone must adapt to it, but I like that things can simmer a bit before we start chopping them up around here.

Anyway, here’s a hodgepodge of Keegan/Ryder Cup/JT (of course) thoughts. Also, if you haven’t seen my initial piece for CBS Sports on this very thing, you can check it out right here.

Onto the news.

19 Thoughts on Keegan Bradley’s Captaincy

1. Winning the press conference — especially the July-the-year-before-the-matches press conference — could not matter less, but after the run of captains the U.S. has been on, it was quite nice to (finally) see somebody win a press conference.

I think we only have two options when it comes to how well Keegan handled questions on Tuesday.

1. He was prepared with some of the best work in PR history.

2. He does in fact think about the Ryder Cup every minute he’s awake.

That’s how good, detailed and measured he was with his answers. He gave a ton of himself — “the Ryder Cup at Brookline changed my life” — and some on everyone else — “we’re looking at extending auto qualifiers” — but wouldn’t commit to details and didn’t (intentionally or unintentionally) throw anyone under the bus.

The bar is pretty low after Rome, but the awareness he showed of the situation and also of himself was really appreciated.

2. A couple of sorta throwaway things Keegan said during the presser actually stood out to me. The first was this.

“I've only been the captain for two weeks and I'm finding myself staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m. thinking about every single situation.”

Keegan seems to care about the Ryder Cup in a different way than other captains and players care about the Ryder Cup.

When I played college baseball, the players on the team “cared” about the school they played for. They mostly liked going to school there and enjoyed the campus and the amenities. They cared, inasmuch as they could, about playing baseball for that school.

But they did not care (could not care) about the school like our fans did. There are 1,000 reasons this was (and still is) true, and we do not need to get steep on all of them.

The point is that Keegan almost seems more like a fan who won a lottery to captain the ship than he does a player whose trajectory was always to this seat.

3. Why does any of that matter?

As humans, we always try get those around us to care more about the things we care about the most. We galvanize people around the things we love.

And why does that matter?

Because when something truly means something to somebody, that person will do anything he or she can to attain it or achieve it.

This is not to say that former players and captains did not care. That is not what I am saying at all. What I’m saying is that Keegan feels different. He seems to care about the institution of the event in the same way that the Europeans do.

Remember Justin Rose’s quote after last year?

“We are united by a culture, and we are united by a generation of players that have come before us. This is our time. Luke has been very clear on that message, this is our time to shine, not because this is our stage, we are just taking care of it because of the amazing role models that we've had before us that have shown us how to do it.

“There's a really strong culture on the European team. A good pairing on the European team doesn't mean playing with your best mate. You know, it means about representing something bigger than yourself, and I feel like that's, for me, what being a European Ryder Cup player is all about.”

It’s not that difficult to squint and replace “Europe” with “America” and “Luke” with “Keegan” and envision this being said about the new U.S. captain.

Caring -- among many other things -- is actually a much better reason to select a captain than career resume, which is one of the reasons the captain has often been selected in the past.

4. The best players sometimes seem to make the worst captains — Nick Faldo and Tom Watson specifically come to mind. Why is that?

Let’s go to Jon Rahm for the answer.

“It's the ability to walk through those gates and those doors and forget about who you are outside of this week, what you have done or what you may do afterwards, really truly doesn't matter.”

Gah, I think about that quote a lot. The more accomplished the player, the harder that is to do, especially for the Americans, who do not have a history of doing it. Keegan is a good player historically but not a really good one and certainly not one of the greats. That can make it easier to “forget about who you are.”

I think in a lot of ways that will work to his advantage as the captain.

5. The whole boys club thing got re-litigated after this selection, which mega triggers me. I have been making the case that Europe is also running a boys club (one that actually works). They call it something different, though: "Putting a complete team together and not just picking the 12 best players statistically."

There is some evidence of this.

Here’s what I wrote last September when the U.S. picked JT.

Also, there’s this.

What Europe understands — the reason Poulter and Sergio are always on the team — is that you’re not just rolling the 12 best stat lines out there and hoping for the best. The U.S. has been doing that for forever, and that’s just not how the Ryder Cup works, which is why J.T. was the right pick.

JT’s selection was also unique in my eyes. ZJ’s process seemed mostly bad — taking your friends — which is probably a reason for the U.S. to try and step out of that insular world. However, last year’s result was mostly good — getting somebody on the team who wants the ball and knows what to do with it in that arena, putting the heart and soul of the team on a plane to Italy. Putting an entire team together.

This can go poorly.

The U.S. arguably shouldn’t have taken Rickie last year. But he’s in the club so they did. So I guess what I’m saying is not that there’s not a boys club. There definitely is. I’m saying that’s not always a bad thing, and JT being on the team in Rome is certainly not the proof everybody thinks it is that the boys club is why the U.S. stinks¹ and that it absolutely must be broken up.

6. If you have followed me for more than, like, one week, you know I’m a massive “humility and vulnerability win Ryder Cups” guy. This is not technically true — great golf wins Ryder Cups — but one of the best things about the Ryder Cup is that the sample size is so small that you could convince yourself that anything is true.

Anyway, I think Keegan has a lot of both. Him talking about how he needed to collect himself after he was asked (told?) to be the captain was very cool.

“I was a little bit uncomfortable with some of the guys, you know, my idols, that were looked over for this position and I needed a second to figure that out.”

Keegan seems to exist in a good spot of balance between humility and confidence. That’s a difficult place to maintain, but he’s at the right stage of his career for it. Here’s another quote that I think shows it.

“One of the coolest things that's happened to me over the past 24 hours is I've gotten over 300 text messages and my favorites have been from the old captains that have texted me guys like Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite and Curtis Strange. I haven't gotten back to them because I don't want to respond with just a thank you.”

Small, tiny gesture. But one that says a lot. That he feels the need to convey that says a lot, too.

7. So that is the humility, and here’s the vulnerability. The admission that he did not go about his career the way he should have. The admission that he looks up to players who are 10 years younger than him. That’s a big deal.

“One of the things that I love about this group, and I'm not ashamed to say that as an older player that's been out there longer, I look up to these guys, they genuinely love each other and they're friends.

“When I came out on Tour I had a much different outlook. I was, I looked at everybody as the enemy and I made everybody out to be against me and I really regret that. I love this generation of how they have gone about their careers and their friendships and it makes the life on Tour a lot better. That's what I admire most about this group and I think that's what would make them great teammates.”

The initial announcement was stunning, yes, but Keegan flashed elite captain traits throughout the presser. I think I’m all the way in.

8. Here’s a take: I think Keegan will be a better captain than Tiger, and I think Keegan would specifically be a better road captain than Tiger. I wish they would have flipped them. Cat at home, Keegs at Adare.

As I pointed out in this lengthy rant from my hotel room in Rome, you have to create your own energy in road Ryder Cups, and Keegan is great at that. Tiger? Not as much. Tiger’s gifting when it comes to these team events is that he’s a savant when it comes to courses and matchups and strengths and weaknesses. He processes all of that stuff on another plane.

You could talk me into Tiger being the chief ass. captain for as long as he wants it. But as a hype man who has to handle the media and plan the entire deal?

I’m extremely tepid on that.

9. Speaking of buddy ball. This was an extremely good point that I have not thought about enough. Rory tweeted late last year that the best thing that happened to last year’s Euro team was Henrik Stenson going to LIV. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do believe this is true.

That Euro transition was always going to be awkward and difficult — a prime example is when they got got in 2021 at Whistling Straits.

But LIV made it clean and easy for them (which I obviously hate).

10. This was a two-tweet banger.

11. How good of an idea is this?!

My first take “he would actually be a sick captain” captain would be Ernie Els. No idea why he came to mind, and I could probably think of somebody better in the future, but I think I’d be in. You can read through some answers here.

12. I read back through my newsletter (70 newsletters ago!) discussing the JT over Keegan/Glover etc. news. Here’s what I wrote about Keegan at the time.

This third outcome? I did not see it coming. Apparently, neither did he!

13. Speaking of that, we need to talk about how completely insane it is that the PGA of America just … told Keegan he was going to be the captain. Obviously he was always going to say yes, but that is just such a wild admission that I love for all the reasons I stated above but also conveys a lack of vision and foresight that is difficult to see happening on the other side.

I distinctly remember Paul McGinley discussing Luke Donald accepting the job last November at the Hero World Challenge and talking about how that’s the first of a many-step plan. Last November! Then Tiger — I think this is how it went — kind of strung them along for several months before slamming the door and them turning to Keegan.

Because I personally think it’s a great choice, it feel a little “well Minnesota took Jonny Flynn and this kid from Davidson is available I guess we’ll take him,” to me, but to not really have a backup plan as recently as like June 1 is wild.

14. OK, this got me.

15. Listen, I’m not offended that Xander said this. Brooks and others have said something similar. What I’m offended by is that Xander clearly lacks the self-awareness to understand that no one (I mean no one) wants to hear about his lobster and wine plights in places like New York, Rome and Ireland in July of a non-Ryder Cup year. No one. Zero people.

Just do it behind closed doors!

What, Keegan is not going to listen to the players? And even if he won’t and you need to use it as leverage, the time to do that is not [checks notes] 14 months before the event!

Just the softest, weakest quote imaginable. One you would never, ever hear from the other side. In fact, I think the other side cackles when they hear stuff like that because they know they’re already 1 up.

16. I think it’s a little crazy that the U.S. side still uses active, “might need a captain’s pick” players to decide its captain.

17. In on this. If Bryson is even 55 percent of the Bryson he is this year, he has to be there. The greatest showman on the biggest stage.

Also I, too, wish I never cared about the LIV stuff.

18. Apropos of nothing but … When people began saying that Twitter is the worst place on earth, I would tacitly agree but internally wonder what they were talking about. I have loved Twitter for a long time — both as a repository for my thoughts and takes but also as a forum for all kinds of folks to publicly banter. It can feel like magic.

I … don’t think I love it anymore? Maybe the problem is me — in fact, I know some of it is for taking such a strong anti-LIV stance early on (which I mostly now regret) — but it has become, in so many ways, a horrific medium.

There are still moments of brilliance and delight, but far fewer than there used to be. I will still continue to use it because it is the best option, but man, I don’t know that I’ve ever been more broadly discouraged by the way a lot of people interact on that app.

19. Lastly, I’m not sure I can handle all the suitcase talk for the next 14 months. They need to have him open it at the closing ceremonies like one of those time capsules from a high school that was packed up in the 1950s. Visors and white belts and all kinds of things falling out of the thing all over a stage in New York.

Would watch. Will watch regardless. Greatest event in the world.

Thanks for reading until the end.

You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.