Count Xander Schauffele among the PGA Tour stars shocked by the announcement that Keegan Bradley — not presumptive first-choice Tiger Woods — will captain the U.S. Ryder Cup team in September 2025 at Bethpage Black.
“Yeah, it's surprising,” the reigning PGA Championship winner said Tuesday at his press conference ahead of the Genesis Scottish Open. “You typically expect someone that's a little bit older to get selected as a captain. I think a lot of people expected Tiger to do it. He obviously has a lot on his plate. Keegan expressed his love for the Ryder Cup publicly, which we all saw.”
“I haven't talked to him or seen him yet but I'm sure he's over the moon and is going to do a great job.”
Tiger, 48, turned down the opportunity to steer his first Ryder Cup squad, citing his various behind-the-scenes duties for the PGA Tour. The 15-time major champion is a vice president of PGA Tour Enterprises, and serves on the PGA Tour policy board and on a special subcommittee tasked with negotiating with LIV Golf's backer, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
‘With my new responsibilities to the Tour and time commitments involved, I felt like I would not be able to commit the time to Team USA and the players required as a captain,' Woods said in a statement. ‘That does not mean I wouldn’t want to captain a team in the future. If and when I feel it is the right time, I will put my hat in the ring for this committee to decide.”
Bradley, 38, will be the youngest U.S. Ryder Cup captain since Arnold Palmer. The six-time PGA Tour winner was curiously snubbed by captain Zach Johnson for the doomed 2023 team — a storyline gut-wrenchingly captured in Netflix's Full Swing.
“I really was rooting for those guys,” Bradley told me in March. “That was real. My wife and I — we both wanted them to win and do well. But, it was important, someday, for my kids to also realize, like, sometimes if you don't get your way or what you want, you still have to do the right thing. And that's what we wanted to do.”