Keegan Bradley's Fork in the Road

In the history of the modern Ryder Cup, we’ve never had a more interesting American captain than Keegan Bradley. Sure, we’ve had bigger stars in the position, but none have consumed this much oxygen in the months preceding the event.

Most of this is due to Bradley's play in 2025. In 20 starts, he has a win, five top-10s, 10 top-25s and has missed just two cuts. Data Golf currently has him ranked 20th in the world, and when you think about the questions asked by Bethpage Black, Bradley seems like a very solid fit (7th on the PGA TOUR in strokes gained: tee to green, 29th off the tee with a driving distance average around 306 yards).

But the question for Keegan Bradley over the next week is bigger than whether or not he picks himself—it’s about the two roads that exist for this American Ryder Cup team.

The first road is the most obvious; it has become the joke around the way the PGA of America has defined the modern American teams. It’s the old boys club, the popular kids that seemed molded early in their careers to lead the red, white and blue into the next 10-15 years of this event. When you couple the Ryder Cup with the Presidents Cup and the fact that most of these guys are expected to compete in a team event every single year, continuity and comfortability seems like a logical approach to success.

The issue, of course, is that the boys in the club aren't playing like they used to. A decade ago, it seemed like Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler would be that new-age wave. They were young and hungry and talented and some of the best players in the world. Spieth was winning majors, JT was starting to flash and Rickie’s popularity was reaching beyond golf in a time that golf still wasn’t that cool.

Spieth was 21 years old when he made his first Ryder Cup team. He played great that week in a loss for the Americans and his passion alongside Patrick Reed proved that the U.S. had found its next star.

In 2016, at Hazeltine, Phil Mickelson all but crowned Spieth as the next great American Ryder Cupper.

“It’s time for him to take over the leadership role because he’s going to be the lead guy for the US team for many years to come,” Mickelson said. “'He's going to help this team win through his play but he's also going to help this team be successful through his personality, his ability to get people to buy into what he's saying. He's a very instrumental part of the US team this year but he's going to be an even bigger part in years to come.”

The problem is, the young boys club, as we could have called them, have now aged and have struggled to carry that mantle that Phil talked about. In the last Ryder Cup in Rome, Spieth won just a single point, Thomas a point and a half and Rickie threw up a bagel in his two matches in that American loss. In a Ryder Cup where new, unexpected stars were born (Max Homa and Patrick Cantlay, specifically), the faces of this whole thing for the United States never got off that plane in Italy.

Two years later, the discussion is still focused on two of those three. JT is almost a lock to get picked by Keegan despite continuing to struggle in the biggest events (Thomas has missed seven of his last 12 starts in majors and a lot of those missed cuts were by a mile) and Spieth’s name continues to float despite being extremely mediocre this season.

Captain Keegan is going to have a choice, and its an interesting choice. He can go down this same road again and lean into the experience that has, when you go back over the recent history of this event, produced winning results on home soil.

But the other door for Keegan is one that probably feels a little closer to home than the boys club does. Keegan was never in that club. He wasn’t one of the guys. When it came time for the popular kids to pick the 11th and 12th guys over the last few years, they’ve gravitated towards their guys and less towards the dudes playing excellent golf during a Cup season.

Keegan, of all people, understands what guys like Ben Griffin (ranked 9th on the points list) and Andrew Novak (ranked 13th) are going through. Guys like Griffin and Novak truly have to play their way onto these teams. When you dedicate a large number of spots to the boys club, you aren’t allowing a lot of randoms to prove that they deserve an American pullover.

But when you look back at the best Ryder Cup captaincy of all-time, Paul Azinger in 2008, you see a guy that basically diverted away from the current model. He went extremely European with the way he brought that team together.

The Americans tend to win these things on talent. Whistling Straits was an embarrassment of riches. Seven of the top-10 in the world were on that team with just one name (Scottie Scheffler of all people) ranked outside the top-16 in the world. But four years seems like a lifetime ago when you dig through a lot of those names. Dustin Johnson went 5-0-0 that week and won’t sniff the team in 2025. Brooks Koepka much of the same.

But this time around, the talent has shifted to the Europeans and for Bradley, the key isn’t just who you pick but how you build this thing out. The Americans are going to be a less talented bunch. They’re going to be a much less experienced group of 12. And the identity of this whole thing has two options that could either spectacularly succeed or triumphantly topple and time will tell which one it is.

The two roads are very different and Keegan is just a few days away from having to toss that American-made V-12 in drive and power down one of them.