![\"Keegan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/250818-keegan-bradley-vl-246p-80213c.jpg\")
Keegan Bradley hits from the seventh tee during the first round of the BMW Championship golf tournament in Owings Mills, Md., on Thursday.Nick Wass \/ AP<\/p>\nKeegan Bradley fondly recalls the putt that altered his life forever.<\/p>\n
Bradley was in attendance at the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, when he watched Justin Leonard sink a 45-foot birdie putt on the 17th hole \u2014 effectively winning the tournament.<\/p>\n
That swing of the club motivated Bradley, then 13 years old, to pursue his dream even harder.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was golf obsessed, but that pushed me into some crazy mode,\u201d Bradley told NBC News on Monday. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t believe how amazing the tournament was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, 26 years later, Bradley is not only the 13th-ranked golfer in the world, he also will be the captain of the United States team for the 45th iteration of the Ryder Cup.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The tournament \u2014 which features two teams of 12 golfers from the United States and Europe facing off in a match play format \u2014 will take place from Sept. 26-28 at Bethpage State Park in New York. Six Americans have already automatically qualified for the team, while six more will be selected at Bradley\u2019s discretion (including, possibly, himself).<\/p>\n
Bradley, 39, was named captain of the team in July 2024. He will be the youngest captain of a Ryder Cup squad since Arnold Palmer in 1963. <\/p>\n
That year was also the last a golfer served as both captain and player \u2014 a dual role several of Bradley\u2019s contemporaries have said he should serve next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn any profession, the respect of your peers is what you cherish the most,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cTo hear the boys say that is probably one of the highlights of my career. But my job when they asked me to be captain is put the best team on the course at Bethpage. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t care if I play, if I don\u2019t play, as long as we win. Whatever decision I make with regards to that is what I think is best for the team to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keegan Bradley hits from the seventh tee during the first round of the BMW Championship golf tournament in Owings Mills, Md., on Thursday.Nick Wass \/ AP<\/p>\n
Bradley wouldn\u2019t reveal his picks Monday, though he said he had a \u201cpretty good idea\u201d of the direction he wanted to go.<\/p>\n
Whoever Bradley selects will be tasked with stopping what one could argue has been an era of European dominance. Europe has won eight of the last 11 Ryder Cups dating back to 2002.<\/p>\n
Bradley, however, views things differently.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be perfectly honest with you, we\u2019ve traded home and away Ryder Cups since 2008 with the exception of 2012,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re right around even. Certainly the guys on this team have no clue what happened in the early 2000s. I think that\u2019s sort of a misconception.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bradley himself will be looking for his first Ryder Cup win. He was a member of the 2012 and 2014 teams, which both lost. Still, Bradley looks back on those competitions fondly, particularly off the course, where he got to share bus rides and a locker room with the likes of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.<\/p>\n
For now, Bradley is trying to enjoy the process of being captain. He said he appreciates the support from fans he\u2019s received over the last year, while also admitting his duties are getting more stressful as the cup approaches. (Among those duties was unveiling the team\u2019s new Ralph Lauren uniforms on the \u201cTODAY\u201d show on Monday.)<\/p>\n
Bradley has leaned on his vice captains as he navigates the lead-up to September, in particular mentioning Jim Furyk as one of his most trusted advisers.<\/p>\n
A huge Boston sports fan, Bradley drew a parallel to the Red Sox when discussing how his team can succeed at Bethpage.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou put together a good team, a team that\u2019s close, a team that plays hard, and you can win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keegan Bradley fondly recalls the putt that altered his life forever. Bradley was in attendance at the 1999…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":158019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1430,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-158018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115054675599375329","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}