Keegan Bradley admitted Wednesday that he had a brief conversation with Tiger Woods to get the latter’s input surrounding the 2025 Ryder Cup.
Unfortunately, the timing of that talk with the 15-time major champion wasn’t the best. The two were competing in the Open Championship — so there were more pressing matters on the table.
“Yeah, I’ve told Tiger that I want him to be as involved as he wants to be,” Bradley said on Wednesday, one day ahead of the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine, Minnesota. “We didn’t — with the [Open Championship] going on, we’re not really chatting too much about that.
“We both have a job to do and I don’t want to bother Tiger with that. I think in the coming months — we’re still 14 months out here, so we’ve got a long time.”
Speaking of time, Bradley had three weeks to sit on the news of being named the captain for the U.S. team before the world was let in on the “secret.”
“I wasn’t telling a soul. I was sort of dealing with the news myself as well,” 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, getting a plan together on how we’re going to do this. I really wanted to be the one to call [Europe’s Ryder Cup captain] Luke Donald and tell him, so I wanted to keep that quiet.
“It was nice to not have anybody know so I could sort of move under the radar making all these plans. But now, having it be out in the open has been helpful, too.”
Bradley, 38, made his first move on Tuesday by naming Webb Simpson as his first vice captain.
Additional vice captains will be named at a later date by Bradley for the event, which is scheduled for Sept. 26-28, 2025, at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, New York.
Team Europe is the defending Ryder Cup champion, defeating the Americans 16½ to 11½ in 2023 at the Marco Simone Golf & Country Club near Rome.