Following his win at the Travelers Championship, Keegan Bradley finds himself moving up to seventh in the world rankings and seemingly with one foot on the team for the Ryder Cup later this year.
It is now hard to imagine Keegan Bradley not playing on the 2025 Ryder Cup team. He is up to ninth in the qualification standings, while it feels particularly significant that he has won the final signature event on the PGA Tour before Bethpage.
Of course, there is plenty of time to go before the Ryder Cup. But with no more signature events and no more majors on American soil to play before September, Bradley’s victory at the Travelers Championship certainly seems to have left the 39-year-old on the brink of making his own team.
But given that Bradley is the captain, there is perhaps more of a chance that the world number seven will decide against making his return to the Ryder Cup as a player after more than a decade away.
Certainly, he would not be the first world number seven to miss out on being picked for the Ryder Cup.
The world number seven who missed out on being picked for the 2016 Ryder Cup
Davis Love III had a point to prove before the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine. Love III was given another shot at captaincy having overseen the defeat four years earlier when Medinah became the stuff of nightmares for his team.
World number two Dustin Johnson was the US Open champion, while Jordan Spieth was two places lower in the world rankings.
But interestingly, the next American in the world rankings was not involved as a player at Hazeltine, with Bubba Watson overlooked in favour of Ryan Moore.
Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
The 2016 Ryder Cup saw the US team make a slight change to how they completed their team.
Billy Horschel went on to win the 2014 FedEx Cup after he had missed out on a pick for Tom Watson‘s team for Gleneagles. With that, Love III was given the chance to wait until after the Tour Championship before making his final captain’s pick two years later.
Moore got that final pick after finishing second to Rory McIlroy at East Lake that year. That meant that Watson – who still finished 10th in the season finale – was left out.
Remarkably, the two-time Masters champion had also finished ninth in the qualification standings. He was the only member of the top 12 who did not play on Love III’s team.
How Bubba Watson left Davis Love III in ‘disbelief’ before the Ryder Cup
Admittedly, Watson’s form had not been particularly impressive. He had just two top 10s after March, with one of those coming at the Olympic Games. The decision was also vindicated with USA winning 17-11 in Minnesota.
But he would still be involved at the Ryder Cup, with Love III naming Watson as his final vice-captain alongside the likes of Jim Furyk, Steve Stricker and Tiger Woods.
It seems that the left-hander was a driving force behind the decision to make him a vice-captain, with Love III admitting that week that his team were taken aback when Watson made it clear that he still wanted to be involved despite the disappointment of not receiving a pick.
“When I told the team members and assistant captains, we were in disbelief,” he said, as reported by the BBC. “What Bubba did really shows how together the US team really is.”
Clearly, it is going to be an easier conversation for Bradley if he decides that he does not want to include himself on the team at Bethpage.