U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Keegan Bradley took care of the difficult calls to the players who didn’t make the team on Sunday night after the final round of the Tour Championship on Aug. 24.
That’s according to NBC’s Brad Faxon, who relayed a story from a lunch he had recently with Ben Griffin, one of Bradley’s six captain’s picks to the 12-man squad headed to Bethpage Black for the 45th edition of the Ryder Cup.
Faxon asked Griffin if he knew whether he was going to be picked or not before he got the eventual call from Captain Keegs. Griffin said he didn’t know for sure until Captain America buzzed him on Monday, the day after the season finale of the FedEx Cup and two days before the official public announcement.
“What he did say that I thought was very interesting is Keegan called all the no’s on Sunday night,” said Faxon, a former two-time U.S. Ryder Cupper who will be one of the main TV analysts for NBC next week.
Faxon pointed out that there was a method to the madness. Bradley didn’t want a repeat of what happened to him when U.S. Captain Zach Johnson phoned him and broke the bad news that he wouldn’t be going to Rome as a member of the 2023 U.S. team and it was all captured on video for the Netflix documentary “Full Swing.”
“I think that was a big effect on Keegan, that he didn’t want that to ever happen to anyone else,” Faxon said.
Bradley took Nos. 7-9 (Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Griffin) in the team rankings but skipped over Nos. 10-12, which included himself, to take Cameron Young, Patrick Cantlay and Sam Burns.
So, Sunday calls to the likes of Maverick McNealy, who ranked No. 10, were bad and Monday calls were good. There won’t be the utter disappointment of Bradley being passed over in the next season of Full Swing but that doesn’t rule out seeing the euphoria of one of the captain’s picks making the team. The U.S. Ryder Cup team’s social media handle did post Bradley’s ‘yes’ call to Burns.
Faxon recounted this story as an example of a captain controlling the message and the many responsibilities of being a team leader.
“Those are some of the smaller details that both captains will have to have to be successful (next) week,” he said.
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