Keegan Bradley during the first round of the 2023 BMW Championship. | Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images
Keegan Bradley badly wanted to make the 2023 Ryder Cup team, but Captain Zach Johnson decided to go in a different direction.
The story of Keegan Bradley missing out on the 2023 Ryder Cup team has been well-documented.
But for the first time, Bradley discussed how he learned of his snub while making an appearance on Barstool Sports’ Fore Play podcast,
“I get a call from Netflix, and they say, Keegan, we got a crew 5 min away from your house, so why would they be sending a camera crew if I am not getting picked?” Bradley recalled.
“For the first time, I let my brain think, ‘I did it.’ Why would they be rushing a camera crew to my house?”
Of course, U.S. Captain Zach Johnson did not pick Bradley, opting for Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka, Sam Burns and Rickie Fowler instead.
Bradley, who, like Thomas, has won the PGA Championship, will have to watch the 2023 competition from home.
He explained how Johnson planned on calling everyone in the morning to deliver the news. Hence, the Netflix crew showing up at Bradley’s house for the moment of truth.
“As soon as I picked up the phone, [Johnson gave me] a, ’Hey Keegan,’ and I looked over at [my wife] Jill a second into the call and was like ‘no,’” Bradley added.
“But [Johnson] was really nice, and then I hung up the phone, but you are all going to see this on [Netflix]. I mean, this is real life. Nobody will have ever seen this call before. It was devastating.”
Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images
A young Keegan Bradley and Phil Mickelson play a practice round ahead of the 2012 Ryder Cup.
Bradley has played in two Ryder Cups before, in 2012 and 2014.
The Americans lost both, as Team USA crumbled during Sunday Singles in his first appearance.
Two years later, the Europeans trounced the Americans at Gleneagles in Scotland, winning 16.5-to-11.5.
He did not qualify for the team in 2016, when Team USA won its first Ryder Cup since 2008.
Bradley has not played in the competition since, despite thinking about the Ryder Cup ‘every second he is awake.”
But he will have to wait two more years to try and qualify in 2025, when the competition returns to the United States. Bethpage Black, the site of the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Opens and 2019 PGA Championship, will host.
Hopefully, Bradley will have a chance to don the red, white, and blue in front of the New York crowd at Bethpage, which is 25 miles from where he played collegiately at St. John’s University.
That would make for a fantastic redemption story, don’t you think?
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko for more golf coverage. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough too.
