A month ago, Keegan Bradley looked primed to serve as a vice-captain for Team USA at this year’s Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal. The logic behind that is Bradley would gain valuable experience before taking the reigns of the Ryder Cup team at Bethpage Black next fall.
But then Bradley went from worst to first at the BMW Championship, winning the second FedEx Cup Playoff event as the last player in the field. He also jumped to fourth in the FedEx Cup rankings, giving him a better chance than most to chase down Scottie Scheffler and win the Tour Championship.
Alas, Bradley did not bring his ‘A-game’ with him from Colorado to Atlanta, but the decision to include him was made when he putted out at Castle Pines, per American vice-captain Stewart Cink.
“The major shift was Keegan Bradley winning, and he basically earned it himself with what amounted to an automatic berth, it seemed like,” Cink said ahead of the Ascension Charity Classic on Thursday.
“I think we’ll probably be joking with Keegan a little bit that he’s the first guy in a long time to be relieved of his duties as assistant captain.”
Bradley’s win in Colorado forced captain Jim Furyk’s hand.
He used one of his six captains on him, as Bradley proved that he is still one of the best players in the game despite being 38 years old. He is currently 13th in the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR) and 40th on DataGolf. Over the past 18 months, Bradley has had more wins on the PGA Tour than Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Patrick Cantlay, and Collin Morikawa combined, per Kyle Porter of CBS Sports.
“I guess we’d all have to be pretty honest about it. He almost didn’t make it to the BMW, correct? I think he was 50th going in there, the last guy in the field, and then he goes for a wire-to-wire victory. That definitely caught a lot of folks’ eyes,” Furyk said of Bradley.
“I think for me, that moment of having all that pressure on him and knowing that it was pretty much win or he would not be joining the team and he was able to go out there and do it was pretty key.”
Furyk then revealed that he would add another assistant captain now that Bradley had played his way onto the team.
Max Homa, Brian Harman, Sam Burns, Tony Finau, and Russell Henley rounded out Furyk’s Presidents Cup picks. Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Wyndham Clark, and Sahith Theegala had already qualified.
“I feel really solid about our picks, and one of the main reasons is because the guys that we were focused on picking just lined up 1 through 12, and Jim didn’t have to go much outside of the box, which is always a fear of a captain, to pick over somebody,” Cink added.
“We got our top 12 lined up exactly how we were forecasting it would.”
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
