Pádraig Harrington doesn’t believe that Keegan Bradley can combine a playing role and a captaincy role at the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black this September.
Bradley snatched victory from Tommy Fleetwood on the 72nd hole of the Travelers Championship last week to move up to ninth place in the US Ryder Cup standings with the top-6 earning automatic places on his team to face Luke Donald’s European side.
If Bradley was to include himself on the 12-player panel he would become the first playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963. Harrington doesn’t believe Bradley can play and captain the US to victory although he admits he is a player the Europeans wouldn’t want to face.
“Keegan is a player the Europeans don’t want to play against,“ the 2021 European Ryder Cup captain told SiriusXM PGA Tour.
“He is not an easy person to compete against. Everything about him, he’s a really tough competitor, you know, even his twitching and mannerisms, that’s not easy to play against.
“Like the shot he hit there (into the 18th on Sunday), he’s very ballsy at the end of the day, he hits the shots.
“So there are a lot of players that you could tee it up against, and you wouldn’t choose Keegan as one of them.
“He’s just a good match player. Gritty. Tough. He’s going to get it done, even if he’s not feeling his best. He’s going to do it.”
US Ryder Cup captain Bradley fits the bill as the type of player you want in your team but Harrington is adamant that he wouldn’t be able to balance the demands of the captaincy with the pressure of playing in a Ryder Cup.
Bradley hasn’t made a Ryder Cup appearance since 2014 and was cruelly left out of the 2023 side that lost in Rome.
“So you want them on your team. Obviously, the complication now for the US is that he’s the captain, and should he step down from the captaincy and play?” questioned Harrington.
“He’s definitely in the 12 best players. There’s no doubt about that. I don’t think he can be captain and play.
“So if that’s what you’re asking, the captaincy of the Ryder Cup is so much bigger a deal than anything, and particularly when you think of something like, I know people say you had Tiger (as playing captain) at the Presidents Cup.
“For that, we know the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup are not the same thing. The stress levels for the captain at the Ryder Cup, the requirements, the pressure, the timing, the way it goes about, it’s a much quicker event.
“The Ryder Cup, I do not in any shape or form think a captain can be a player.”
US star Collin Morikawa spoke about the possibility of Bradley playing In New York earlier this week.
“I mean, look, right now he’s playing as one of the best Americans and one of the best golfers in the world, winning a signature event,” Morikawa said.
“The consistency I think he’s brought this year, I’m sure there are already contingencies to be put in place because it’s not like it wasn’t a possibility that that could happen. That’s on him.”
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