{"id":136356,"date":"2025-09-06T05:21:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T05:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136356\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T05:21:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T05:21:06","slug":"larry-nelson-invited-to-be-u-s-ryder-cup-ambassador-in-classy-gesture-by-keegan-bradley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136356\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Nelson invited to be U.S. Ryder Cup ambassador in classy gesture by Keegan Bradley"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a great saying, \u201cIt\u2019s never too late to do the right thing.\u201d U.S. Ryder Captain Keegan Bradley<\/a> is righting a wrong by inviting World Golf Hall of Fame member Larry Nelson to serve as an ambassador to the U.S. Ryder Cup team<\/a> on Sept. 26-28 at Bethpage Black in New York.<\/p>\n

Reached by phone Thursday, Nelson said he was participating in a video shoot for the PGA of America in downtown Atlanta during the Tour Championship two weeks ago when Bradley surprised him and asked him to be the team\u2019s guest and hang out with the other past U.S. captains expected to attend.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was really special to me,\u201d Nelson told Golfweek. \u201cI haven\u2019t been to the Ryder Cup since 1987, but I\u2019m thrilled to be going this year and it meant a lot to me that Keegan went out of his way to include me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Larry<\/p>\n

Larry Nelson of the United States tees off on the 10th hole during the Greats of Golf competition at the Insperity Invitational at The Woodlands Golf Club on April 30, 2022 in The Woodlands, Texas.<\/p>\n

What a classy gesture to include Nelson, 77, who played on three U.S. Ryder Cup teams (1981, 1983, 1987) and recorded a career mark of 9-1-3 in the biennial competition. Fellow American great Tom Watson went so far as to say that\u00a0if he could pick only one golfer to play in a must-win Ryder Cup match, it would be Nelson.<\/p>\n

That he was never chosen to lead the American team in the Ryder Cup has been a major oversight. Nelson is a remarkable success story, having fought in Vietnam for nearly 2\u00bd years during his tour of duty in the Army. He didn\u2019t even take up golf until he was 21 years old.\u00a0That didn\u2019t stop him from winning\u00a010 times on the PGA Tour, including three\u00a0majors (1981 and ’87 PGA and\u00a01983 U.S. Open).<\/p>\n

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Nelson was rumored to be in line to captain the American side in 1995, but the PGA went with Lanny Wadkins. Surely he\u2019d get the role in 1997, but the PGA went a different way and selected Tom Kite. And so it went for the better part of the next decade and beyond. Someone else always got the job rather than a true American hero who had served his nation and performed admirably in the trenches as a player in the Ryder Cup. Nelson is too modest and too soft-spoken to complain about being passed over for the Ryder Cup job, but he admitted it is one of his few regrets in the game.<\/p>\n

Bradley knows what it feels like to want to play for your country and be left off the team. It happened to him just two years ago when U.S. Captain Zach Johnson made a heartbreaking call to Bradley that was filmed in Netflix\u2019s golf documentary \u201cFull Swing,\u201d for all the world to see.<\/p>\n

Nelson downplayed his disappointment, noting he\u2019s got company in being overlooked for the captaincy and it was an honor to be considered. But he said he felt as if he had been welcomed back into the fold and looks forward to returning to the Ryder Cup after all these years.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t make up for not being chosen in this leadership role, but Nelson deserves to sit with the past captains and his presence can only inspire the United States’ 12-man team to believe they can play the type of golf that Nelson was famous for at Ryder Cups.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t plan on talking to the team, but if called on I will,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how touched I am that Keegan took the time to personally invite me in Atlanta.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been too long \u2013 nearly 40 years \u2013 since Nelson has attended a Ryder Cup. Kudos to Bradley for having the vision to right a wrong in his own small way.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Keegan Bradley invites Larry Nelson to 2025 Ryder Cup in special role<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a great saying, \u201cIt\u2019s never too late to do the right thing.\u201d U.S. Ryder Captain Keegan Bradley…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,23719,85479,11383,99,3257],"class_list":["post-136356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-keegan-bradley","tag-larry-nelson","tag-ryder-cup","tag-sports","tag-world-golf-hall-of-fame"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}