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For weeks, armchair analysts have been debating whether Keegan Bradley should pick himself for the U.S. Ryder Cup. On Wednesday, we got our answer.
“Our last captain’s pick is Sam Burns”
With those words, the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup team was complete. Captain Bradley made his call, and in doing so he didn’t call his own name.
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But was it the right decision? What do the stats say? Let’s take a look.
After six players had automatically qualified following the conclusion of the BMW Championship, the six captain’s picks would be made from a group of seven top candidates: Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns, Cameron Young and the captain himself, Keegan Bradley. Yes, Maverick McNealy, Chris Gotterup, Brian Harman and Andrew Novak came in and out of consideration, but it felt like when decision time came, they were long shots.
So now it’s time to look at the seven finalists. Firstly, here’s how they performed in the events they played in 2025.
Colour-coordinated by success, it’s clear to see how it was going to be hard to leave Griffin off this year’s team. While he was doing a desk job with a mortgage company the last time the U.S. hosted a Ryder Cup, his play this year has been undeniable. Of the seven candidates, he led in wins (2), top-10s (10), top-25s (15) and top-10s in majors (2).
Look at Keegan’s results though. His win at the Travelers Championship in June, a PGA Tour signature event, is more than Morikawa, Cantlay or Burns could manage. All were winless this season. In 21 events, Bradley only missed the cut twice.
But results don’t always represent the full story, what about strokes-gained data? Here’s a breakdown of each candidate based on the PGA Tour Strokes Gained numbers in 2025.
The last row of data shows that all seven players are clearly elite PGA Tour golfers. All finished in the top 25 players in total Strokes Gained per round.
While Bradley excelled around the greens, his putting numbers were a clear red flag, along with Morikawa’s. Bradley, who ranked inside the top 20 in strokes gained/putting just two years ago, has lost his form on the greens over the last 24 months, despite his impressive tee-to-green play.
It seems putting may have been a key factor in Bradley’s choices, evident by picking Young and Burns, both in the top 10 putters on the PGA Tour this season, despite Bradley outplaying both in all three tee-to-green metrics.
Finally, let’s talk form.
The folks at Data Golf track a player’s strokes-gained performance across three, six, 12 and 24 months. I pulled the data on each of the seven players here and ranked them by where they feature among all U.S. players, across all tours.
This is where the case for Bradley is the strongest. In fact, if you look at all U.S. players across those monthly intervals, only three feature in the top 10 in each period: Scottie Scheffler, Russell Henley and… yes, Keegan Bradley.
Young clearly made a late-season charge with his win at the Wyndham Championship and his play across each of the three FedEx Cup Playoff events. Burns, perhaps the last man into the team, sprinted through the line with top-10s in BMW and the Tour Championship. However, in the last three months, Bradley still ranks ahead of Thomas, Morikawa and Cantlay as well as Schauffele, English and DeChambeau, all three of whom were automatic picks on the team.
So did Keegan make the right call on Wednesday?
Our very own Shane Ryan asked him an interesting question immediately after the captain had announced his picks.
“I wonder if you’d agree with the statement that if the American captain was anyone other than Keegan Bradley, then Keegan Bradley would be playing on this team?”
Bradley winced slightly, then refused to answer the question head on.
“How are we ever going to know that? Because I am the captain,” he said.
But then he went on.
“I grew up wanting to play Ryder Cups. I grew up wanting to fight alongside these guys and it broke my heart not to play. It really did. You work forever to make these teams but, ultimately, I was chosen to do a job, I was chosen to be captain.”
Suffice it to say, Keegan’s right; we will never know if Bradley would have been on the team had another player been captain in 2025. However, the stats suggest if he had made the team, he would have earned his spot.
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Main Image: Andrew Redington
