FARMINGDALE, N.Y. \u2014 Keegan Bradley has caught himself a few times, falling for a trap that comes with the view from the sideline. Seeing one thing, but imagining another.<\/p>\n
Bethpage Black, site of this week\u2019s Ryder Cup, was mostly empty Monday, making it easy to let the mind wander. Bradley, the United States team captain and, as the No. 13-ranked player in the world, the de facto omission from the 2025 U.S. team, cruised around the course for an early-week practice round.<\/p>\n
The players played.<\/p>\n
The captain watched.<\/p>\n
Everyone knew this would be the case ever since Bradley used his six captain\u2019s picks to give Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Cameron Young, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns spots on the U.S. roster. But now the Ryder Cup is here and Bradley is coming face-to-face with the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve thought about it every second,\u201d Bradley said Monday.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one thing to say all the right things about such a choice, as Bradley did when announcing his picks on Aug. 27. It\u2019s another thing to live with the choice. Turns out, it isn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the back of my mind, I\u2019m always thinking, I could have been out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course he has. The 39-year-old nearly outright qualified for this Ryder Cup team. He finished ahead of Young, Cantlay and Burns on the team points list. He won the Travelers Championship in late June. The last two seasons have produced some of the best golf of his 17-year career.<\/p>\n
This U.S. team, along with the Europeans, is a collection of Bradley\u2019s peers, not a group of young guys he\u2019s mentoring. This is where it gets tricky.<\/p>\n
\u201cI catch myself every now and then looking down the fairway, seeing the guys walk down the fairway and think how badly I\u2019d like to do that,\u201d Bradley said during a joint press conference with European captain Luke Donald, who\u2019s in his second stint leading the Euros, \u201cand how badly I\u2019d want to be in the group with Scottie Scheffler and seeing him play and being his teammate.\u201d<\/p>\n
As hard as it is, Bradley keeps reminding himself that he made his decision for a reason. He maintains that it would have been \u201cimpossible\u201d to serve as a playing captain, while relinquishing the captainship to play would have betrayed his original commitment to the task.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been called for a bigger cause here, to help our guys get ready to play and play at the highest level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Those feelings will be hard to square all week, but Bradley doesn\u2019t have much of a choice. It will be curious to follow how Bradley the player might impact the decisions of Bradley the captain.<\/p>\n
The reality is, this is his team. That was the view early Monday morning as Bradley began the journey by gathering everyone together on Bethpage\u2019s first tee. Surrounded by 3,300 empty seats that will shape a raucous stage come Friday, he said what he wanted to say and let everyone take in the moment. The emotion, he later said, was inescapable.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people have worked really hard to get to this point in their lives,\u201d Bradley said.<\/p>\n
(Top photo: Jared C. Tilton \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FARMINGDALE, N.Y. \u2014 Keegan Bradley has caught himself a few times, falling for a trap that comes with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-176002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176002","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=176002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}