Ryder Cup U.S. Stock Watch: Keegan Bradley and the trickiest captain's pick ever

I blew my own mind with a thought on Friday, just as I was coming down with a miserable flu that left me in bed all weekend (thank you Scottie Scheffler for giving me something to look forward to beyond shivering and sweating for 48 hours). Bear with me while I construct the argument: Whether or not you agree that Keegan Bradley got screwed by being left off the Ryder Cup team in Rome—I thought JT deserved his spot, for the record—the narrative after the fact was that he did get screwed, thanks in large part to his parts on “Full Swing” and Zach Johnson’s ham-handed diplomacy skills. The sympathy for him afterward was so off the charts that the powers-that-be on the American side made the bizarre choice to name him captain against all convention and logic. I thought it was a weird, reactionary move (see the second half of the post here), but that Keegan could still be good at the job.

From everything I’m hearing, he has been good. One of the weird side effects, though, is that now he has to worry about picking himself for the team, and he’s in the worst possible place of being in a pretty marginal position with five weeks of mediocre play following his win at the Travelers … which is very, very similar to his place in Rome. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, he accidentally put himself in an impossible spot, because even if you arguably deserve to be on the team, it’s not a great look to pick yourself unless you’re a lock, and it puts a metric ton of pressure on both you, your playing partners and the whole team. It becomes a dreaded distraction. But here’s the thing: If anyone else was captain, all that sympathy from the post-Rome fallout would absolutely guarantee that he’d be on this team. Like, ironclad. No way somebody like Brandt Snedeker as captain is stiffing Bradley for a second time when he’s in the top 12 of the standings.

All of which led me to this epiphany: With the way Keegan Bradley has played the last two years, the only captain who could keep Keegan Bradley off the Ryder Cup team is Keegan Bradley himself.

Isn’t that insane??! No other human being would exclude him. The only way he sits in 11th and doesn’t make the team is if he’s the one deciding and is worried about how it looks and how it will affect the team. Genuinely, this man may be doomed by the universe to never play another Ryder Cup. It’s like some kind of biblical curse.

OK … let that stew in your mind for a bit, then cleanse yourself and continue on to the penultimate Ryder Cup stock watch. The second playoff event is over, the six automatic qualifiers are locked in, captain’s picks are a week away, and the action on the American side is hot and heavy. Here’s where we stand. Let the rankings be your guide.

Goodstorie

Ryder Cup U.S. Stock Watch: Keegan Bradley and the trickiest captain’s pick ever

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