New York (AFP) – Keegan Bradley could become the first Ryder Cup playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963 after jumping to seventh in world rankings following his PGA Tour Travelers Championship victory. The 39-year-old American’s fightback triumph Sunday over England’s Tommy Fleetwood brought an eighth career PGA crown, his fourth in as many years, and sparked already brisk talk about Bradley playing on his US squad against Europe in September at Bethpage Black.
“Yeah, I mean, listen, this changes the story a little bit,” said Bradley, previously reluctant to consider a playing captaincy. “I never would have thought about playing if I hadn’t won. This definitely opens the door to play. I don’t know if I’m going to do it or not, but I certainly have to take a pretty hard look at what’s best for the team and we’ll see.”
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Bradley leaped 14 spots in the world rankings and into ninth in the US team points qualifying. While still shy of the six automatic qualifying spots, Bradley is in a position that would typically be worthy of a captain’s pick. “It’s still June, so we still got a long ways to go,” Bradley said. “This definitely changes things a little bit and we’ll all get together and figure out the best way to do this.” The six automatic qualifiers will be set after the BMW Championship on August 17 while the six captain’s picks will be chosen after the Tour Championship in Atlanta on August 21-24.
“I will play if I feel like it will help the team,” said Bradley, who has fielded questions about playing in the Cup all year. “I never really planned on playing,” he said. “I really wanted to just be the captain. I really felt strongly about that. I want to serve the guys. They asked me to do a job. I want to do it to the best of my abilities. With the amazing vice captains that I have, and I have a better perspective of playing in the Presidents Cup and being around a lot of the guys, I feel a lot more comfortable if I went that route.”
If he plays, Bradley would load more responsibilities on his assistant captains — Jim Furyk, Kevin Kisner, Webb Simpson, and Brandt Snedeker. “I’m really proud of the guys that are vice captains,” Bradley said. “You got Jim Furyk, one of the greatest players to play and also an incredibly great captain at the Presidents Cup.” Furyk guided the Americans to a 10th consecutive victory over the Internationals in last year’s Presidents Cup at Montreal.
The Presidents Cup also saw Tiger Woods serve as a playing captain in 2019 at Royal Melbourne, when the US team won 16-14 in Australia. PGA of America chief executive Seth Waugh told Bradley a year ago when he was picked as captain that he wanted Bradley to be the first playing captain since Palmer.
“My head was spinning, I didn’t know what they were talking about, but they knew that was a possibility,” Bradley said. “A year ago I don’t know if I would have thought I would be seventh in the world, but I certainly thought I would be contending in tournaments.”
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