Ryder Cup Watch: Who’s In, Who’s Out, and Why It’s Keegan Bradley’s Call

We’re less than a week away from learning the full makeup of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, as captain Keegan Bradley is slated to announce his six captain’s picks Wednesday.

Team Europe is likely to return at least 11 of its 12 players from the 2023 competition. The Americans have every reason to shake things up as they try to put a difficult loss in Rome in the rearview.

If you’re just catching up, the six automatic qualifiers were Scottie Scheffler, J.J. Spaun, Xander Schauffele, Russell Henley, Harris English and Bryson DeChambeau. That’s four recent major winners and a couple of steady Freddies in Henley and English.

Justin Thomas finished just a few hundred points out of the top six, and unlike 2023, when his selection amid a slump was controversial, he’s a virtual lock for a captain’s pick.

How to round out the team? Bradley has more options than you might think. The list below doesn’t even include 2023 major winners Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman. These are five players on the bubble and why each of them has a case for Bethpage Black.

Cameron Young

The 2021-22 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year carried the “best player on tour without a victory” label for a while. Back-to-back T4 finishes at the Canadian Open and U.S. Open signaled a breakthrough was near, and sure enough, he captured his first win at the Wyndham Championship earlier this month. Young has only maintained that form, placing fifth and 11th at the first two legs of the FedEx Cup playoffs.

Young is also a Westchester County native who went to school in the Bronx, a player who’ll give the New York crowd extra reason to get loud. He shot a final-round 64 to win the 2017 New York State Open at — fittingly — Bethpage Black.

Ben Griffin

Casual golf fans may not know this name yet, but it’s high time. Griffin won twice in a month this spring, and there’s no weakness in his game. He ranks eighth on tour in total strokes gained, with top-30 marks in both approach and putting.

What Griffin brings to the team is nerves of steel. At the final round of the BMW Championship last week, he opened triple bogey-double bogey-bogey and somehow rallied to shoot a 1-under 69. The culprit? He tried to down too much of a creatine supplement at the first tee. “I basically just inhaled a snowball,” he said afterward. Please let this man defend the stars and stripes.

Collin Morikawa

This two-time major winner isn’t a lock for the team? No sir. He caught flak in March for skipping media after Henley overtook him at the Arnold Palmer. Since then, he’s had a season to forget — rarely in contention and no top-20 finishes at either of the first two playoff events.

The argument for Morikawa is based on Ryder Cup experience and trust. Though he only earned one of a possible four points in 2023, he had three wins and a tie in 2021. He’s had a comparable season to Patrick Cantlay, another veteran, if you’re just picking one. Both men shot 6-under 64 in the first round of the Tour Championship on Thursday, perhaps eager to show Bradley their stuff one last time.

Chris Gotterup

This list wouldn’t have included Gotterup in late June, even after a strong U.S. Open finish. Then he beat Rory McIlroy, Scheffler and others at the Scottish Open for the biggest win of his career — and followed it up with a third-place finish at the Open Championship, all before turning 26.

Bethpage Black isn’t links golf, but the course is known for length and demanding tee shots. When it hosted the 2019 PGA Championship, the longest drivers rose to the top. That’s Gotterup’s specialty, ranking ninth on tour in distance. Like Young, he has a local tie, with fans driving in from his native New Jersey likely to chant his name.

Keegan Bradley

Isn’t this the million-dollar question, the one we’ve been eager to answer since Bradley was named captain 13 months ago? Early on, he declared he wouldn’t use a captain’s pick on himself and would only play if he auto-qualified. That idea has faded now that Bradley won the Travelers Championship and finished 10th in the points race.

He could occupy one of the spots on his own team and only play a few matches as he balances captain’s duties with keeping his own game sharp. Or he could pick others on this list — and wonder “what if” if they don’t pan out.