Stunning win moves Keegan Bradley closer to Ryder Cup playing captain status

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In winning the Travelers Championship on Sunday, Keegan Bradley didn’t just set off jubilant cheers in his native New England while breaking the heart of Englishman Tommy Fleetwood.

Bradley also moved up the U.S. Ryder Cup team rankings and — if he doesn’t manage to crack the top-six group of automatic qualifiers — positioned himself to possibly become a captain’s pick.

Which sets up the potential for a fascinating scenario, given that Bradley is the U.S. Ryder Cup captain.

“I never would have thought about playing [in the Ryder Cup] if I hadn’t won, and this definitely opens the door to play,” Bradley said after his 18th-hole birdie gave him a 2-under-par 68 and a one-shot win over Fleetwood and Russell Henley at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut. “I don’t know if I’m going to do it or not, but I certainly have to take a pretty hard look at what’s best for the team, and we’ll see.”

Having entered the week with eight top-25 finishes this season, including a tie for eighth at the PGA Championship last month, Bradley was 17th in the Ryder Cup rankings. Sunday’s win, his first in 2025, is set to vault him as high as ninth.

American players can accrue Ryder Cup standings points through the BMW Championship in mid-August, but Bradley’s current form puts him in strong contention for at least an at-large selection. There is one caveat, however: He has said he would only become a playing captain if he piled up enough points.

“I’m not going to pick myself,” Bradley said in August, several weeks after the PGA of America named him Ryder Cup captain. “The only way that would happen is if the team was insisting on it, but even if they did, I don’t see that happening. I want to make the team on points.”

If the 39-year-old winner of the 2011 PGA Championship had difficulty envisioning himself making the Ryder Cup team, that apparently was less of a problem for PGA of America officials. Bradley told reporters Sunday that when they informed him last year of his captaincy, they said they wanted him to become the first U.S. playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963.

“My head was spinning,” Bradley said of getting that call. “I didn’t know what they were talking about, but they knew that was a possibility.”

That possibility grew after Bradley stormed back on the final four holes to overtake Fleetwood, who started Sunday with a three-shot lead and regained that advantage after Bradley bogeyed the 14th. Bradley drained a 35-foot birdie putt at the 15th to creep closer, though, then watched Fleetwood make bogey at the par-3 16th.

Fleetwood was still up by a stroke at the 18th and looked to be in good position when he parked his drive in the middle of the fairway, as did Bradley. From there, however, Fleetwood left his approach short of the green while Bradley stuffed his to within six feet of the cup. Fleetwood’s first putt fell short of Bradley’s mark and his second missed the hole, leaving him with a three-putt bogey.

Suddenly handed an opportunity to win with a clutch putt, Bradley did just that. He roared, pumped his arms and chest-bumped his caddie as the crowd erupted. Bradley, who also won the Travelers in 2023, has long enjoyed particular support in the Northeast. An avid Boston sports fan, he was born in Vermont and grew up in New England before playing college golf at St. John’s in New York.

“The support I get here – the support I get everywhere, with the Ryder Cup captain[cy] and the ‘U-S-A!’ chants, but especially here – it’s pretty incredible,” Bradley said Sunday.

He added that the raucous atmosphere at the 18th hole was “really close” to what he experienced at the 2012 Ryder Cup. That was his first turn as a participant in the event, staged that year in Medinah, Illinois. He also played in the 2014 Ryder Cup held in Scotland.

Adding to the Ryder Cup overtones Sunday was the fact that Bradley chased down a prominent European player. Fleetwood, 34, has played in three Ryder Cups – he scored the decisive point in 2023 to help his team win the event in Italy – and is well positioned to earn a fourth roster spot this year.

What Fleetwood has never done is win a PGA Tour event, making Sunday’s collapse all the more painful. With his sixth runner-up finish in 159 starts on the tour, Fleetwood now has the most top-10 finishes (42) without a win in the circuit’s modern era (via pgatour.com).

“I’m upset now. I’m angry,” Fleetwood, a seven-time winner on the European tour, said afterward.

“When it calms down,” he continued, “I’ll look at the things that I did well, look at the things that I can learn from. … I would love to just go and sulk somewhere, and maybe I will do that, but there’s just no point making it a negative for the future, really. Just take the positives and move on.”

Henley added to the drama of the 18th hole Sunday by chipping in for a birdie that ultimately left him in a tie for second after Fleetwood’s three-putt. Bradley got his eighth career PGA Tour win, and he is now a career-best seventh in the world ranking.

“I’m always trying to be the best that I can be,” he said, “and I feel that I’m playing the best golf of my career right now. A year ago, I don’t know that I would have thought that I’d be seventh in the world right now, but I certainly thought I’d be contending in tournaments.”

If Bradley does land on the Ryder Cup team as a player, he’ll tee off at Bethpage Black on Long Island, not far from where he starred at St. John’s. That could set the scene for some gallery excitement notable even by the Ryder Cup’s frenzied standards, but Bradley already has felt a few goosebump-inducing moments.

“Not a lot of people have experienced coming down the stretch, as the Ryder Cup captain, of big tournaments, and I’ve tried to embrace that,” Bradley said Sunday. “I’ve tried to feed off the energy, but they were really loud this week.”