NAPA, Calif. \u2013 Keegan Bradley has not shied away from saying the quiet parts out loud.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we all agree that me being the captain was definitely a shock to everybody,\u201d the U.S. Ryder Cup captain shrugged Wednesday at the Procore Championship.<\/p>\n
Bradley has turned the PGA Tour\u2019s fall opener into a makeshift spring training for Team USA with 10 of his 12 players at Silverado Resort preparing for this month\u2019s matches. But getting player buy-in to his pre-match tune-up doesn\u2019t begin to plumb the depths of his outlier status.<\/p>\n
Selecting Bradley, who at 39 years old is still in the prime of his competitive career, was very much an outside-the-box move, even for an organization with a tendency of zigging when everyone anticipates a zag. It was similar renegade thinking that prompted the PGA\u2019s call to make Tom Watson the U.S. side\u2019s oldest captain at 65 for the 2014 matches.<\/p>\n
That experiment was an unmitigated failure and led to a decade of player empowerment via various committees and task forces. By some accounts, Bradley is a swing back in the other direction, away from the perceived \u201cgood ol\u2019 boy\u201d network that had produced mixed results and little of the coveted continuity that the Europeans value.<\/p>\n
The first test of the PGA\u2019s gamble, not to mention Bradley\u2019s resolve, came last month when he announced his six captain\u2019s picks, a list that didn\u2019t include his own name despite a mountain of evidence and vocal support, even in his own team room, that he should play.<\/p>\n
\u201cHim not playing is one of the most selfless acts I\u2019ve seen in golf,\u201d said Gary Woodland, one of Bradley\u2019s vice captains and a longtime friend. \u201cHe\u2019s the 11th-ranked player, his game fits the course, he\u2019s playing so well, but he really believed truly in his heart that he can lead this team best by being their captain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what it means to him \u2014 for 15 years it\u2019s all he talks about. Outside of his family, the Ryder Cup is the biggest thing in his life, and for him to not play because he wants to help these guys in different ways is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early evidence suggests Bradley will be the ultimate players\u2019 captain, much like Paul Azinger in 2008 when the U.S. upset a European team many believed should have been favored. Having 10 of his dozen in the field in Napa, an event many of the game\u2019s top players would have likely skipped, is proof of player buy-in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it can\u2019t be stated enough how good of a job Keegan\u2019s done for us so far and the energy that he\u2019s brought has been great,\u201d said Scottie Scheffler, who is playing the Napa event for the first time. \u201cHe\u2019s very organized, he\u2019s doing a really good job keeping the guys fired up. Everybody\u2019s excited to be here. This is something we looked at the calendar very early in the season, about how we were going to get ready for the Ryder Cup, and this has been circled there for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bradley said he anticipates a captain style closer to Azinger and Jim Furyk, who is one of his vice captains this year at Bethpage Black and served as the 2018 U.S. captain. But what makes Bradley most unique among recent leaders is his status as a contemporary.<\/p>\n
In 21 starts this year, Bradley finished seventh on this year\u2019s FedExCup points list, won the Travelers Championship and finished 11th on the final U.S. Ryder Cup points standings. The majority of recent captains, including Furyk and Zach Johnson, who led the team two years ago in Rome, were well past their competitive primes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really how much he\u2019s sticking up for us and putting us first for any decision that happens at all. That was a big reason why he\u2019s doing what he\u2019s doing and why us players have respect for him as a captain,\u201d said Justin Thomas, the most experienced player on this year\u2019s team. \u201cHe\u2019s doing all this with us, every single week. It maybe brings more validity if we ask him something and he\u2019s like, \u2018Well, we can\u2019t get that done.\u2019 If he wasn\u2019t a player he\u2019d be like, \u2018Well, you don\u2019t understand.\u2019 But he is a player and he does understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also understands what is expected of him as an unconventional pick for captain. The nature of the Ryder Cup means he will ultimately be judged by the results \u2013 nothing more, nothing less.<\/p>\n
It is unorthodox thinking, however, that has become Bradley\u2019s mission statement. If his selection as captain was a universal \u201cshock,\u201d his leadership should be equally idiosyncratic.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe being the captain isn\u2019t really the status quo of what the U.S. side has done. I remind myself and the vice captains all the time that we were picked to do this job because we wanted a little shift in what we were doing,\u201d Bradley said.<\/p>\n
The PGA wanted outside-the-box and on that front, with the matches looming in two weeks, Bradley is delivering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NAPA, Calif. \u2013 Keegan Bradley has not shied away from saying the quiet parts out loud. \u201cI think…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-135946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}