Captain Keegan Bradley does not pick himself for 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup team

Let the second-guessing begin.

U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Keegan Bradley rounded out his 12-man lineup for the 45^th Ryder Cup on Wednesday morning and elected not to pick himself as one of his six captain’s picks.

"The decision was made a while ago that I wasn't playing," Bradley said. "The last 48 hours, we had the team set. We weren't scrambling at all. This was a really tough decision. I will say, there was a point where I was playing. All these guys stepped up in a major way and played their way on to this team."

“I know how hard they worked to be on this team and how much they wanted to be on this team,” Bradley said.

When Bradley was announced as captain in July 2024, he declared that he wouldn’t choose himself if he didn’t qualify for the team among the six automatic qualifiers on points. But that was before he won the BMW Championship a month later, one of three FedEx Cup playoff events. Bradley opened the door to using one of his captain’s picks on himself as he enjoyed one of the finest seasons of his career and ranked among not just the top 12 Americans but the top 12 in the world. After winning the Travelers Championship in June, he said, “This changes the story a little bit.”

Bradley’s game cooled off after his win in his next four starts and he failed to make the team as an automatic qualifier. He finished T-7 at the Tour Championship on Sunday.

"To be honest, I feel like I'm still one of the best players in the world," he said last week. "I figured the likelihood of being completely out of the picture was probably pretty slim. We've been preparing for this since then. It would be easier if I was top six or way out of it."

European Ryder Cup stalwart Rory McIlroy offered one explanation why Bradley shouldn’t do double duty, deeming him one of America’s 12 best players but concluding that the job of captain has become too big for one person to do both given all the meetings with assistants in determining the lineup and the like as well as press conferences to juggle.

“The captain isn’t going to be on the course all day, so really the captain’s only going to be able to play one session on Friday, one session on Saturday,” McIlroy said. “Would you rather not have a player that has the flexibility to go twice if he’s playing well?”

Ultimately, Bradley came to his senses and realized that while he could've made history, he could do more for the team from the sidelines. 

“I grew up wanting to play Ryder Cups. I grew up wanting to fight alongside these guys. It broke my heart not to play. It really did. You work forever to make these teams, but ultimately I was chosen to do a job. I was chosen to be the captain of this team. My ultimate goal to start this thing was to be the best captain that I could be,” he said. “This is how I felt like I could do this. If we got to this point and I felt like the team was better with me on it, I was going to do that. I was going to do whatever I thought was best for this team. I know 100 percent for certain that this is the right choice.”

Bradley knows he’ll be defined by this decision and said he is “100 percent certain” he made the right call, but he won’t know for sure until the U.S. team has completed the task at hand of reclaiming the Cup it surrendered in a convincing defeat in Rome in 2023. “Then I’ll know I made the right decision,” he said.

The 2025 Ryder Cup will take place September 26-28 at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York. Until then, let the second-guessing begin.