Keegan Bradley admitted on Wednesday that he had a brief conversation with Tiger Woods to get his opinion on the 2025 Ryder Cup.
Unfortunately, the timing of that conversation with the 15-time major champion was not the best. They were both competing in the Open Championship, so there were more pressing matters on the table.
“Yeah, I told Tiger I want him to be as involved as he wants to be,” Bradley said Wednesday, a day before the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota. “We didn't, with the [Open Championship] moving on, we're not really talking about it much.
“We both have a job to do and I don't want to bother Tiger with that. I think in the next few months… there's still 14 months to go, so we've got plenty of time.”
Speaking of time, Bradley had three weeks to wait for the news of his appointment as captain of Team USA before the world learned the “secret.”
“I didn't tell anybody. I was just dealing with the news, too,” he said. “I was very… I didn't know I was going to be the Ryder Cup captain, so I was dealing with that with my family, coming up with a plan on how we were going to do this. I really wanted to be the one to call it.” [Europe’s Ryder Cup captain] Luke Donald and I told him, so I wanted to keep it quiet.
“It was nice that no one knew about it, so I could lay low and make all these plans. But now, having it all out in the open has been helpful, too.”
Bradley, 38, took his first step on Tuesday by naming Webb Simpson as his first vice captain.
Bradley will name additional vice captains at a later date for the event, which is scheduled for Sept. 26-28, 2025, at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York.
Team Europe are the reigning Ryder Cup champions, having defeated the Americans 16½ to 11½ in 2023 at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club near Rome.
