SUTTON, Mass. (AP) \u2014 Keegan Bradley knew the stakes when he accepted the Ryder Cup captaincy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou win, it\u2019s glory for a lifetime. You lose, it\u2019s \u2018I\u2019m going to have to sit with this for the rest of my life,\u2019\u201d he said Monday in his first public comments since leaving Bethpage Black last month. \u201cThere\u2019s no part of me that thinks I\u2019ll ever get over this.\u201d<\/p>\n
A two-time Ryder Cup competitor, Bradley was appointed captain of the U.S. team last year and brought a stacked squad to face Europe on New York\u2019s Long Island. Although they were favored to win at home, the Americans fell into a 11 1\/2-4 1\/2 hole heading into the final day \u2013 the biggest Sunday morning deficit in modern Ryder Cup history.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou put so much into it, and you have all this planning, and the first two days went as poorly as we could have ever thought,\u201d said Bradley, who needed to step outside the tent and gather himself before he addressed the team on Saturday night. \u201cIt was pretty emotional. It was sad, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Americans won 8 1\/2 points from the 12 singles matches to make it seem close.<\/p>\n
Bradley has accepted the blame for some mistakes, including a setup that combined with the rain to make the notoriously difficult course more manageable. Others have pointed to his pairings and even the decision to leave himself off the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the Ryder Cup to now has been one of the toughest times in my life,\u201d Bradley said at media day for the Travelers Championship, where he is the defending champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really would enjoy playing in one more. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll get the chance,\u201d said Bradley, who at 39 would have been older than all but one player, Justin Rose, on either team this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis effing event has been so brutal to me. I don\u2019t know if I want to play. No, I do,\u201d Bradley quickly corrected himself. \u201cIt\u2019s such a weird thing to love something so much that just doesn\u2019t give you anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bradley said he is still trying to emerge from the \u201cRyder Cup fog\u201d and get back to being just one of the top players on the PGA Tour. After being named captain, he won the 2024 BMW Championship, and his win in Hartford this June gave him more individual victories in that span than any American other than Scottie Scheffler.<\/p>\n
A different captain might have picked him for the U.S. team.<\/p>\n
Although there were moments when he wished he\u2019d made himself the first playing Ryder Cup captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963, Bradley said he knows he made the right decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll forever wonder and wish that I had a chance to play there,\u201d he said. \u201cThe first practice day, I was out on the tee, and I was watching the guys walk down the fairway all together, and I said: \u2018I wish I was playing. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about. I\u2019m missing out.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the second or third day I was like \u2018It\u2019s a good thing I\u2019m not playing,\u2019 because I was so physically exhausted. … Good thing I didn\u2019t do it, because it would have been bad,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cI just didn\u2019t think I could do both jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, spending the last year as the Ryder Cup captain gave Bradley an experience few can claim. At tour stops across the country \u2014 before the players themselves knew if they would be on the team \u2014 he felt the love from American fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect the support,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the history of the game \u2014 back to Bobby Jones, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus \u2014 I don\u2019t know if any of them got to experience what I experienced this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got to experience something in the game of golf that I don\u2019t think anyone\u2019s ever experienced: where I\u2019m the Ryder Cup captain but also competing at a very high level, and winning tournaments, and contending in tournaments. And it was really incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP golf: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/golf<\/p>\n
Jimmy Golen, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUTTON, Mass. (AP) \u2014 Keegan Bradley knew the stakes when he accepted the Ryder Cup captaincy. \u201cYou win,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-228096","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\/228096","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=228096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}