Thursday Themes - Keegan Acceptance Edition

We're hitting all seven stages of grief, although the Negotiating phase went especially poorly.

Acceptance - I'm quite OK with it, as a week of Tiger's non-answers might have been more than I could take.  I am glad for sure that Seth Waugh vetoed any retreads, so let's dive in to the day-two (or is it three?) takes:

5 lingering questions about Keegan Bradley, Tiger Woods and the U.S. Ryder Cup captain selection

Only five?

But, really, this is the one that seems most curious:

Tiger Woods appears to have passed on the job. Missed opportunity or blessing in disguise for the PGA of America?

Appears?  Not only is he too busy to perform the gig, but he's apparently also too busy to give them an answer.... 

Tiger has the job whenever he wants it. I don't think it makes much of a difference to the PGA of America, either good or bad. Maybe he'll do it in Ireland in 2027, or at Hazeltine after that. Tiger

Woods or not, a Bethpage Ryder Cup is going to be epic—and maybe a little messy. —LKD

Tiger is a different cat as we all know. But just like everyone else he is unlikely to be 100 percent effective in a job he is even a little bit reluctant to take on. If you’re not fully on board, you have no business getting involved in something like the Ryder Cup. That’s a recipe for coming second in a two-way battle. So yes, if he harbors any doubts at all, Tiger saying “no” is the right thing for him, the right thing for the American team and the right thing for the beleaguered (at least in Ryder Cup terms) PGA of America. —JH

I tend to think of it as a good thing for all parties. But let's concentrate on Tiger here. He had nothing to gain by taking the captaincy at Bethpage. If the U.S. wins, so what? In this age of strong home-course advantage, the U.S. is supposed to win. But if the U.S. loses—and don't think that can't happen—then where does he go from there? Where does the PGA of America go from there? No, so much better if he is the hero in 2027 who finally leads the U.S. to its first win in Europe since 1993. Nice career walk-off. —DS

I think it's entirely appropriate that Dave Shedloski focused exclusively on Tiger, because he has that in common with Tiger himself.  Leaders do what their organizations require, not what's convenient.

How far behind do you think Bradley really is being named only 14 months ahead of the competition?

Surely provoked by Tiger’s prevarications, the timing of this appointment is clearly a nonsense. The Europeans wasted no time in re-appointing Luke Donald, who did such a great job last time round. In Italy, Donald was surrounded by a group of assistant captains who covered a broad spectrum of talents. They all made sense, and they all had been given time to grow into their varying roles. Everything worked perfectly because the assistants knew exactly why they were in place and what they were there to do. With only 14 months to go, Bradley is just barely visible in Donald’s rearview mirror in so many ways. By any measure Bradley is at a huge disadvantage. —JH

Well, he's been to Bethpage for the 2019 PGA Championship, so that helps. He has John Wood as the new Chief of Most of The Little Things. But he has played in only two Ryder Cups and has never been involved from the captaincy and organizational end. Thin résumé. Yeah, he's behind. He's going to need good help. A lot of it. —DS

He's probably pretty behind, largely because the U.S. needs a few tablespoons of reinvention after its Roman debacle. But strangely, I don't think it actually matters much to Keegan. He'll go all in, and maybe even forge a new model for the U.S. team along the way. —LKD

Behind with what?  Those tablespoons of reinvention have been BS since 2014....  Maybe Tom Watson 
was right, it is about twelve players. I know, crazy talk.

At the risk of being wrong come September 2025, does this turn out to be a good pick or a bad one?

I'm going with irrelevant, because this has always been a Cup the U.S. will win.

Bradley as Ryder Cup captain clearly has the potential for disaster. At first (and second and third) glance, his appointment looks like little more than a panic measure. Let’s face it, with Tiger declining to lead and Phil Mickelson’s long-ago departure to LIV, there wasn’t an obvious name in the frame. But Bradley does have the advantage of playing at home in front of New York fans who will do more than any other group of spectators ever has to distract the opposition. 2025 will almost certainly be the ugliest Ryder Cup in history, an aspect of the proceedings that will distract from any of the many shortcomings the American skipper may own. A small consolation indeed. —JH

I've had a bad feeling about this Ryder Cup for the Americans since the European payback in Rome. A lot of things can happen between now and when the teams are finalized to change my mind. That's not to say I think Europe will win. It's going to be a tough crowd, which actually could cut both ways. My thinking is that the 2025 Ryder Cup could well be the closest since 2012, which Europe won in the so-called "Miracle at Medinah." I believe anyone other than Tiger was going to be a bad pick. But he left the PGA no choice. —DS

It'll be a good one. Keegan, if nothing else, will care. There's a pretty high downside to captaining at Bethpage—a place where the U.S. team is undoubtedly expected to win—but Keegan, if nothing else, will light a fire. —LKD

Let me posit a radical thought, to wit, that they're better off without Tiger.  The man almost performed the miracle of losing a President's Cup, and doesn't want to be there.  To me the tell is John Huggan's answer, in which he recites the caution flags but still can't see a Euro win.

Though the guys do lay a good marker that, if the U.S. plays poorly, that crowd will turn on them in a, what's the phrase, a New York minute.

Do we think Eamon wrote his own header here?

Lynch: Keegan Bradley is a good choice as Ryder Cup captain. His team will determine if he’s good for the U.S. — or for Europe

A little evasive for the opinionated Ulsterman, but I do like his take on the Task Force:

Recent U.S. Ryder Cup skippers have been more transactional than transformational. The task

force created after Tom Watson’s bruising tenure in 2014 accomplished two goals: it relieved PGA of America executives of responsibility for selecting a captain while still keeping checks coming to the right address, and it delegated control of the team to a core group of players who were then recycled biennially through the captaincy and vice-captaincies. Noble chaps all, but a perception took root that the room where it happens didn’t seat many folks.

The captains chosen since ’14 fit the mold that cast generations of their predecessors — men well stricken in years who are either on or nearing the Champions Tour glue factory in terms of their competitive relevance. More recently, captains have also been made men in the task-force mafia. Bradley is 38 years old, ranked in the world’s top 20, and assuredly not part of the coffee klatch that denied him a captain’s pick last year, despite a playing record better than any of the half-dozen who were chosen to suit up in Rome. Of the rationales that will be offered in support of Bradley — passion, college-era proximity to the venue at Bethpage Black, generational change — none is more welcome than this: his appointment takes a sledgehammer to the task force buddy culture that has hogtied Team USA for 10 years, during which captains began to sound like concierges and act like the job was to just keep players comfortable.

 Pods, Eamon!  Don't forget the damn pods!

Right on cue, one of his players informs us of what's important in a captain:

Xander Schauffele on Keegan Bradley being named U.S. Ryder Cup captain:

"I feel like Keegan would understand sort of when we need to get up, when we need to practice, and when you need to do this and hopefully dodge anything you don't have to do and maybe that will help us."

— Brentley Romine (@BrentleyGC) July 9, 2024

How about hats, Xander?  The coming Patrick/Xander cage match with Captain Keegan could be good fun as well...

We shouldn't need this warning:

We can’t say if Bradley will be a good leader since he has no applicable résumé to judge. He hasn’t ever been a vice captain nor has he voiced a vision, mainly because he wasn’t asked to. The first conversation he had with the PGA of America about the captaincy was when he was called and told it was his — a fact that will be cited as a dereliction by PGA officials if his time in the role goes poorly. Nor can we assume he’ll struggle, but the trait most often cited in his defense — passionate patriotism — isn’t enough. Just ask Lanny Wadkins or Tom Lehman or Curtis Strange or Hal Sutton or Corey Pavin or Davis Love III or Jim Furyk or Zach Johnson.

While this is likely true, it also could be quite the mess if it goes badly:

For too long, the U.S. Ryder Cup team room has functioned as an echo chamber of comforting blather, and not in the manner of locker rooms in real team sports, where whining, undermining conduct, petulance and apathy are mercilessly rooted out by coaches or managers. The Ryder Cup captaincy can’t be crowdsourced for the purposes of making every player feel heard, seen, included and comfortable, but that’s seemed to be the prized objective since the task force went to work. As Mark Twain said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Whatever happens on Long Island 14 months hence, Bradley’s tenure will make the job easier for those who follow him. For that reason alone, he can already be chalked up as a winning skipper.

There's no downside to blowing up the pretensions of the Task Force, though it would also help if he ended up with a dozen players that actually wanted to be there.  

The Healing - He's back, so brush up on all our therapeutic terminology:

Instead of getting all of McIlroy’s thoughts in the immediate aftermath of another major gone by — something he was swiftly criticized for — we got them all Wednesday morning at the Genesis Scottish Open. And there were a lot of them. McIlroy took the first question on the topic and

rambled for 2 minutes, 28 seconds, one thought flowing into the next, a reminder that this defeat had layers.

“I think the way I’ve described Pinehurst on Sunday was like it was a great day until it wasn’t,” he began. “I did things on that Sunday that I haven’t been able to do in the last couple years. Took control of the golf tournament. Holed putts when I needed to. Well, mostly when I needed to. Made birdies. You know, really got myself in there. And then, look, obviously unfortunate to miss those last two putts, or the putt on 16 and obviously the putt on 18.

“Yeah, it was a tough day. It was a tough few days after that, obviously. But I think as you get further away from it happening, you start to see the positives and you start to see all the good things that you did throughout the week.

“Yeah, there’s learnings in there, too, right. I can vividly remember starting to feel a little uncomfortable waiting for my second putt on 16, and you know, the putt on the last, it was a really tricky putt. And I was very aware of where Bryson was off the tee. I knew I had to hit it really soft. If the one back didn’t matter, I would have hit it firmer.

“But because I was sort of in two minds, I didn’t know whether Bryson [Dechambeau] was going to make a par or not, it was one of those ones where I had to make sure that if the putt didn’t go in, that it wasn’t going 10 feet by, which it very easily could have.

Learnings?  This would make perfect sense if it were used to explain his 2011 Masters meltdown, but shouldn't he know how to manage himself at crunch time by now?

 This debate was relitigated as well:

Rory McIlroy's media blowoff reignites a debate about obligation in the face of frustration

I think this is a nothingburger, especially as Rorty has a rett good track record of taking his lumps with microphones in his face:

He sat for a press conference the day after the PGA Tour made him to be a “sacrificial lamb.” He

sat for questions at Los Angeles Country Club, after finishing second at the ’23 U.S. Open, promising he “would go through 100 Sundays like this to get my hands on another major championship.” He stood stoic for 13 questions after a gut-wrenching loss at St. Andrews in 2022, only to slink off teary-eyed into the arms of his wife. He did an on-course interview after a crumbling Sunday 80 at the Masters in 2011. It turns out, McIlroy has spoken a helluva lot more than most other tour pros — nearly 50 times in official press scrums this season alone — so in one of the toughest moments of his golfing career, he wanted to get away.

He doesn’t regret it.

“No offense, you guys were the least of my worries at that point,” McIlroy said Wednesday. He chuckled because it was true. Incidentally, McIlroy’s sunken face while watching DeChambeau finish, from within the scoring room at Pinehurst, is an image that says it all anyway.

But on another subject, it ain't just a river in Egypt:

McIlroy didn’t pull any punches coming to his looper’s defense.

“You know, it’s certainly unfair. Hank Haney has never been in that position. Smylie has been in that position once, and I love Smylie, and he was out there with us on 18.

“But just because Harry is not as vocal or loud with his words as other caddies, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t say anything and that he doesn’t do anything. I just wish that, you know, these guys that criticize when things don’t go my way, they never say anything good when things do go my way.

“So where were they when I won Dubai earlier this year or Quail Hollow or the two FedEx Cups that I’ve won with Harry or the two Ryder Cups or whatever? They are never there to say Harry did such a great job when I win, but they are always there to criticize when we don’t win.

Right.  Perhaps Rory is unaware that Dubai and a U.S. Open are not exactly comparable?  What does that tell us?

“At the end of the day, they are not there. They are not the ones hitting the shots and making the decisions. Someone said to me once, you would never — if you would never take advice from these people, you would never take their criticisms, either. Certainly wouldn’t go to Hank Haney for advice. I love Smylie, but I think I know what I’m doing, and so does Harry.”

And yet, the same bad things keep happening at critical moments.  But as long as you know what you're doing and don't care about winning another major...  What's that definition of insanity?

Before I Leave You - They're playing the Scottish this week in East Lothian, which induced some of the boys to enjoy themselves.  Scenes such as this are one of my favorite parts of the week:

The staff bag on the pushcart from Spieth at North Berwick today 🤌🤌🤌 pic.twitter.com/i89WQyTVgZ

— Dan Rapaport (@Daniel_Rapaport) July 10, 2024

How com Greller wasn't invited to play?

Have a great weekend and I'll likely see you on Monday.