Keegan Bradley, the 2025 Ryder Cup U.S. team captain, has a special connection to New York and the Bethpage Black course from his college years.
Bradley removed himself from consideration as a player for the Ryder Cup, citing the impossibility of fulfilling both captain and player duties.
Team USA members, like Patrick Cantlay, have praised Bradley’s passionate leadership and dedication to his captaincy role.
FARMINDALE, N.Y. — A child of New England, the son of a Massachusetts-based PGA pro, Keegan Bradley played his college golf at St. John’s University.
“And that’s when I fell in love with New York,” Bradley, the U.S. team captain at the 2025 Ryder Cup, said from the constructed stage at Bethpage’s Black Course during the opening ceremony Wednesday, Sept. 24.
New York, in turn, has loved him back. Over his decade-plus professional career, Bradley has become a fan favorite nicknamed “The People’s Golfer.” Fitting, because the golf world calls Bethpage – a public course located within a state park – “the people’s country club.” Fitting, because Bradley played here countless times as a member of the Red Storm’s men’s golf team, with campus in Queens 25 miles from Bethpage.
“I’m especially proud to be the Ryder Cup captain at Bethpage,” Bradley told USA TODAY Sports in August. “I just think that place is absolutely stunning and amazing. Everything it’s about is perfect. I think it’s about golf and the public and locals learning to play and love the game.”
On Mondays in college, as Bradley, 39, tells it, he and his teammates would park by the maintenance building on hole No. 3 and sneak on to play the prestigious Black course in peace.
The U.S. captain said one can be on any of the five tracks at Bethpage and feel the magic that kept him coming back.
“It’s a place that’s been really, really special to me,” Bradley said.
Leading Team USA to victory would take that course-player relationship from “special” to immortal. Even if he’s not playing.
Keegan Bradley’s impossible choice before 2025 Ryder Cup
Bradley was playing some of the best golf of his life when it came time to finalize his Ryder Cup roster.
The Netflix documentary “Full Swing,” about life on the PGA Tour, chronicled the moment former U.S. captain Zach Johnson informed Bradley he didn’t make the 2023 version of the American team.
One year later, the PGA asked him to be that squad’s captain. Ever since then, he’s been focused on putting together the best team – and best positioning the group for success – at Bethpage.
What he didn’t anticipate was that he’d have to consider himself. The topic of whether Bradley would pick himself as one of the six captain’s selections had the golf community abuzz.
Ultimately, Bradley said, he’d removed himself from consideration well before his decision deadline. He’s still thought about playing in this tournament “every second,” he admitted Monday.
“But I’ve also thought about how impossible it would be,” Bradley said. “Like I said earlier, I was picked to do this job as captain, and there’s been certain things that I’ve done during the week or lead-up that if I was playing, I don’t think I could have done at the level that I needed to do them at.”
There have been moments on the course in which Bradley will longingly stare down the fairway “and think how badly I’d like to do that, and how badly I’d want to be in the group with Scottie Scheffler and see him play and be his teammate.”
“But I feel like I’ve been called for a bigger cause here, to help our guys get ready to play and play at the highest level,” he said. “But in the back of my mind, I’m always thinking, ‘I could have been out there.’”
The pressures of preparing the team and himself individually would have spread him too thin, Bradley said.
“I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed being the captain and how I’ve enjoyed not having to worry about getting to sleep and getting my rest or how I haven’t had to think about what time I’m going to go practice or meet my coach and then meet the guys,” Bradley said. “It simplified things a lot for me.”
‘Authentically passionate’ Keegan Bradley has complete buy-in from Team USA
On the first tee Monday, Bradley gathered his vice captains and the entire team with their caddies to listen to a lineup of guest speakers and ended with a special rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” One speaker was Chris Mascali, a FDNY lieutenant whose father Joe died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center. Chris Mascali brought Joe’s FDNY helmet to the tee, and it now sits in the U.S. team room.
It was a chance to contextualize the moment that awaits the Americans, tastefully orchestrated by their leader, Bradley.
“Keegan is so passionate, authentically passionate about this event and about being captain and doing the best possible job he can,” Patrick Cantlay said. “It’s a real pleasure to be on the team with him leading because it’s easy to buy in because you know that there’s buy-in from the top.
“Keegan has just been fantastic so far. I know I speak for the rest of our team saying that he’s doing everything he possibly can to put us in a position to succeed, and we’re grateful to him and how much time and effort he’s put into doing the best job as captain.”
And in a way only a sports captain can, Bradley somehow propped up his team better than they ever could.
“I’ve told them this,’ he said. “I’m older than all of them, but I look up to each and every one of them.”
