Keegan Bradley knows better than anyone how hard these Ryder Cup phone calls could be.
Bradley, who was passed over for the 2023 Ryder Cup team, now has the task of picking the six players who will join the automatic qualifiers for the US squad for the event next month at Bethpage.
Bradley hinted that some surprises could be coming ahead of Wednesday’s official announcement.
“There is probably going to be a few guys that think they are going to be on the team that aren’t going to be,” Bradley told Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis following the season-ending Tour Championship on Sunday.
Bradley’s decision may be even more difficult than the captains before him given that he could be choosing himself for the team.
Bradley told Lewis that he was dreading the “awful” phone calls to the players who did not make the team. “Full Swing” captured the heartbreaking moment Bradley was left off the team by 2023 captain Zach Johnson before the Europeans dominated the Americans in Rome.
The Vermont native currently sits in 11th in the Ryder Cup standings and is coming off a strong summer with a win at the Traveler’s Championship and a tie for seventh at the Tour Championship.
The automatic qualifiers for the team are Scottie Scheffler, JJ Spaun, Xander Schauffele, Russell Henley, Harris English and Bryson DeChambeau.
After that in the standings comes Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Maverick McNealy, Bradley, Brian Harman, Andrew Novak, Cameron Young, Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns, Wyndham Clark and Lucas Glover.
“It’s going to be pretty wild,” Bradley said after Sunday’s round at East Lake, where he got within one shot of the lead before fading. “Whatever decision we make, we’re going to have to live with it.”
Thomas and Morikawa have long been considered locks for two of the spots with Cantlay also considered a favorite.
It gets a little murky after that, but Griffin and Burns have both had very solid summers to put themselves in strong position.
The final spot could be coming down to Young, Bradley and McNealy.
However, given Bradley’s comments speculation on guaranteed spots for the team outside the top six may have been premature.
Young has made a strong push coming off his first career win at the Wyndham Championship earlier this month. The New York native has followed that up with top fives in two of the past three events.
“I think recent form is kind of a hard one to deny,” Young said on Friday, per the PGA Tour’s website. “Aside from that it’s obviously my home state, it’s a golf course I love. It’s almost exclusively a major championship venue, and my major record is pretty good. So I think there’s a few points that if I had to make my case to [captain Bradley], those are things I’d like him to know.”
The Ryder Cup tees off Sept. 26 at Bethpage’s famed Black course.