NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — This may or may not make heartbroken American golf fans feel any better, but Keegan Bradley is still wrestling with the United States’ catastrophic Ryder Cup loss at Bethpage nearly eight months later. He’ll be driving down the road, and all of a sudden he’ll remember an element of that chaotic, wrenching weekend — a pairing, maybe, or a course setup tip, or the one thing he did (or didn’t) say to his players — and everything will come roaring back. That’s about as diabolical a punishment as anyone could possibly conceive for a losing Ryder Cup captain.
Still, though, the demons are starting to recede. “I’m starting to feel better,” he said Monday at Aronimink before the PGA Championship. “The last couple months, I’ve started to feel more like myself.” He conceded that “sometimes I’m a little too honest [in public] with how I’m feeling, and it gets me in some weird spots.”
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The way that the favored, home-team United States lost — getting blown out on Friday and Saturday before rallying Sunday for a semi-respectable 15-13 loss — combined with the terrible behavior of a loud Bethpage contingent all landed on Bradley’s head. He spent months afterward trying to atone for every mistake that led to the loss, some of which were his, most of which weren’t.
Keegan Bradley stands on the 18th green after Team Europe won the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage State Park Golf Course on Sept. 28, 2025, in Farmingdale, New York.
(Carl Recine via Getty Images)
At this point, the Ryder Cup is something of a Greek tragedy for Bradley, with pain and buried trauma at every turn. From his losses as a player in the 2012 Medinah collapse and the 2014 Gleneagles blowout, to being left off the 2023 team in Netflix-televised agony, to Bethpage … it’s safe to say that Bradley and the Ryder Cup may never reconcile.
For that reason, he said Monday, he doesn’t even entertain thoughts of playing his way onto the 2027 team. “Ryder Cup’s just so brutal to me over the years in every way,” he said. “In every single way it’s been brutal, and I have a tough time focusing in on something like that because of how tough it’s been.”
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Still, he can’t help holding out just a little bit of hope, can’t help sharing, or maybe oversharing, his true feelings.
“I told myself after Rome I was never going to get that emotionally invested,” he said. “I was going to play my game and try to get on the team. But I’d really like to make that team in Ireland. I’d really love to play for Jim Furyk, who is an idol of mine, but also become a great friend and mentor. … The guys on the team last year changed my life. Changed who I am as a person, and I would love to play on a Ryder Cup with them.”
Yeah. That doesn’t sound like a guy who’s shying away from yet another chance to get his heart stomped. “I’ll be 41 when that happens,” he conceded. “But what a cool story it would be. How fun would that be?”
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