If breaking up is hard to do, absorbing a loss as a Ryder Cup captain sounds just about impossible to do.
Well, not to do exactly — one captain has to lose, of course — but more so to process, to reconcile, to live with. Zach Johnson would tell you that. So would Padraig Harrington. And Jim Furyk. And Nick Faldo. And Tom Watson. And so many others who came up on the short end of the biennial team event that on paper is an exhibition but in reality is a contest whose participants so badly burn to win that they might trade a digit for a 1-up singles triumph. Or, in a Bradley’s case, a limb.
Forgive the gory imagery, but Bradley doesn’t just bleed red; blue and white also fill his veins. From the moment PGA of America brass surprisingly asked Bradley to take the reins on the 2025 team — the offer came in June 2024 — Bradley will tell you went to bed thinking about the matches and woke up thinking about them. He agonized over who to pick. Who to pair together. Who to sit and when. How to set up the course. How . . . to . . . win. That was it. A singular mission. Losing was simply not an option, but then, of course, that’s exactly what happened: a 15-13 defeat to the Europeans that could have been far more demoralizing if not for a late charge by the U.S. in singles.
The Americans were gutted. You could hear it in their meek voices Sunday evening at Bethpage. You could see in their glazed-over eyes. But the result seemed to cut Bradley deeper than most, if not all. That much became clear a few weeks later when he opened up to AP golf writer Doug Ferguson. “You win, it’s glory for a lifetime,” Bradley said “You lose, it’s ‘I’m going to have to sit with this for the rest of my life. There’s no part of me that thinks I’ll ever get over this.”
Ever? So much for time healing all wounds.
Bradley is in the field at this week’s Players Championship. He opened with a five-over 77, a round largely derailed by the quadruple-bogey 9 he made on the par-5 11th after his tee ball clipped a tree and disappeared. But Bradley’s not one to lay down his arms. On Friday, on the back of an eagle at the par-5 2nd and five back-nine birdies, he signed for a six-under 66 that got him back in red numbers and comfortably under the two-over cutline.
“This course is as stressful of a golf course as we play anywhere in the world,” said Bradley, who missed the cut in his last two starts and has just one top-30 finish in 2026. “Every shot is, like, brutal. So really proud of the way I played today. I really needed this round.
“I just really love this tournament and, like, to not play the weekend would be gross.”
That’s thing about Bradley. He feels. When he loves something, he really loves it. When he commits to something, he really commits. When he eyes up an all-or-nothing 8-footer down the stretch, good luck to that 8-footer.
Bradley was asked if mentally he has felt freed up this season now that he’s relinquished one of his captaincy. And that’s when Bradley opened up again, with such candor that you sensed it was a question he’d been aching to answer.
“Listen, it’s been a little difficult,” he began. “I’m still heartbroken from the Ryder Cup. So trying my best to separate myself and move on, but it’s hard. I think about it a lot. I think about the guys a lot, and I’m still in the process of getting past all that.”
What, he was asked, is he feeling exactly? Is it regret?
“No,” he said. “Unless you’re a captain of the Ryder Cup team you just have no idea what goes into it and the emotional toll that it takes on you. I think like a lot of guys that do it, they’re basically done playing, so they never again — I’m the first person to have to sort of deal with this, get back out there, try to be one of the best players in the world and make the next team. So I’m still navigating how to do that.”
You have to feel for the guy. A year ago, while managing his captaining duties, he played so well that he put himself in the awkward predicament of potentially having to use of his own wildcard picks on himself. (He chose not to.) Then came a soul-crushing loss. And now comes trying to make cuts with the weight of that defeat still very much bearing down on him.
Makes you wonder if Bradley’s only path to a Ryder Cup exorcism would come by way of a second crack at a captaincy. Then again, what would another loss to do him?
“I think any Ryder Cup captain that loses would like to do it again,” Bradley said. “But that’s not up to me.”
