Issue No. 243 | August 28, 2025 | Read Online

FRISCO, Texas — It is a very normal sport thing that the best thing in golf is, against all odds, an exhibition match once every two falls between two very arbitrary teams for absolutely nothing at all other than a gold trophy with a guy on top that looks like Bryson arm-locking his putter.

It means … nothing. And yet it’s one of the things I think about most.

We’ll get to Keegan’s picks shortly, but first a thank you to Precision Pro for presenting today’s newsletter. Precision Pro is doing a Ryder Cup-themed giveaway, which is perfect for today’s newsletter.

They are giving away one USA-themed Titan Elite and one European-themed one. Eligibility for the giveaway = be subscribed to this newsletter (which you are) and also comment right here with who you think is going to win the Ryder Cup and why.

Thanks to Precision Pro for their support throughout the year, and best of luck to everyone on winning one of those rangefinders!

OK, now onto the news.

Many Thoughts on Keegan’s Picks

1. After sitting through an hour of Keegan’s presser and another 10 minutes of a side scrum, asking a handful of questions and generally just taking the entire thing in, there is one massive takeaway I have.

This is (almost certainly) not the way anyone planned it, but it somehow played out perfectly for the U.S. They picked the one guy who probably obsesses over the Ryder Cup the most and put him in a situation that was potentially disastrous if he finished inside the top 12 of the points list but not well inside of it.

That is … exactly what happened.

And as a competitive professional with unilateral control over the situation, it must have been so tempting to pick himself. Must have been so alluring to roll himself out there on the first tee to all the adulation in the world. He won a signature event 66 days ago. He is scoring better than he has since 2013. It was all right there in front of somebody who talks about the Ryder Cup more than Soly and I do!

I think about the Ryder Cup every second I’m awake, basically.
Keegan Bradley (2023 BMW Championship)

And he stared at it, thought about it, held it, considered it … and ultimately laid it down because it wasn’t the right thing to do and it wasn’t what was best for the U.S. team.

You can spin it any which way, but put yourself in his shoes. It’s easy to sit here with my little 9.9 index and declare that someone else should “show some humility!”

It’s very different to close your eyes and envision strutting out on the first tee at Bethpage as the first playing captain since Arnold f’n Palmer and to selflessly reject that vision because you care a lot more about your team winning than you do your own glory.

2. In doing this, he has galvanized the U.S. around him in ways you cannot manufacture. Every captain says, “I care about the team first and foremost.” Not every captain gets to show it by putting aside the very thing they want to do more than anything in the world — play golf in the Ryder Cup — and prove to the guys they’re leading that they actually mean what they say.

Nobody would have blamed him. He “deserved” to be on the team more than Collin Morikawa and probably as much as Patrick Cantlay and Cam Young and Sam Burns, but he knew that wasn’t what was best.

For us as outsiders, it may seem obvious that you shouldn’t pick yourself. But I appreciated the agreement of someone who — for all his strange contradictions and flaws — knows what this Ryder Cup world is like better than maybe anyone.

This was a one of one opportunity, and Keegan absolutely nailed it.

I thought we may get this, and we absolutely did not.

3. I am aware that this sounds absolutely sociopathic, but I genuinely think the U.S. won the Ryder Cup on Wednesday. Maybe they win it anyway, regardless of whether Keegan is the captain, but so rarely does the U.S. have anything to rally around other than “we’re awesome, let’s keep being awesome.”

There was an air of selflessness and humility that has always defined the Europeans, and I think it will serve the U.S. team well not just in 2025 at Bethpage (where they may still lose!) but in 2027 and beyond as well.

If the U.S. is willing to use this as an inflection point (they probably won’t!), I think this can be a real moment for them as an organization and for their trajectory.

This post will continue for Normal Sport members below, and includes …

A million more thoughts from Wednesday’s news.
A wild Ryder Cup stat.
Why I have more faith in Keegan than in a lot of past captains.
The best memes from those Zoom calls (with this one leading the way).

Welcome to the members-only portion of today’s newsletter. I hope you both enjoy it and find it to be valuable to your golf and/or personal life.

4. OF COURSE I asked Keegan what the U.S. captains and vice captains look at when it comes to data and numbers in the weeks and months leading into the picks. His answer was predictable, if unsatisfying.

Well, we look mostly at who has the lowest score at the end of the tournaments. We look at the data. We look at the analytics, and we look at how they would fare at Bethpage, how they would fare in each format, but ultimately we want to see the guys that win and the guys that are up in the majors, the guys that are up in the playoff events.
The data and the analytics isn't going to matter on that first tee when there's 40,000 fans screaming at you. We take that into account and we look at it and we apply it when we can. But we want guys that we know can handle the situation, that can handle the moment and are going to go out there and win points.
Keegan Bradley

Another term for “the lowest score at the end of tournaments” is strokes gained. That’s all it is. It sounds complicated and scary at times, but it’s very, very simply how you fared against how everyone else did. If the field average in a tournament was even par, and you shot 4 under, you gained 1.0 strokes per round on the field. That’s it.

I was asking mostly because I want to know how to talk about this stuff better, and I didn’t expect a real answer, but I did maybe expect a little more than what he gave.

5. I’m still not sure whether Seth Waugh deserves all the credit (the U.S. has real juice now going to Bethpage) or all the criticism (for putting Keegan in this position to begin with). Regardless, The Disruptor disrupted, and the U.S. somehow got an absolute gift out of all of this.

6. A gift that — I am absolutely high on some of this right now — I think they can ride to Ireland. I am even more in on Keegan being a road captain than a home one. Again, the U.S. problem on the road is that it rarely brings its own juice. Keegan brings more juice than the last three road captains — Watson, Furyk and ZJ — combined, and depending on how Bethpage goes, I think he could absolutely rock in that road environment.

7. One thing I absolutely did not expect was Keegan embracing radical transparency, vulnerability and honesty.

Here’s JT.

It's been really, really a cool process to be a part of as a player, and everybody does it so differently and every captain is so great in different ways, but just the communication and how transparent Keegan has been.
I don't want to speak for everybody, but I would say this isn't something that we have experienced before. There were guys that heard things that they wouldn't be expecting to hear, brutally honest, if you will. But he said it himself, he's been in those shoes of being in the dark and not knowing where you are, and I think that's just how he's kind of approached this entire captaincy is he wants to do whatever is best for the team.
He wants to communicate everything as well as he possibly can.
Justin Thomas

I asked Keegan afterward how he reconciles having sort of been a loner and a bit of an introvert with this openness and honesty throughout. He again put the team first.

There's nothing that I will not do for the team to win.
… The last thing you want to do is to make someone feel like they're close to making the team when they're not. And I've been in that situation and I've also been in situations where I have no clue where I stand. And so I felt like I wanted to run this team like you'd run at you know the Celtics or whatever. You know, I wanted it to be a real team and I think we've done a good job with that.
Keegan Bradley

This gives me a lot of faith in his ability to communicate as a captain, something that the U.S. has, uh, struggled with at times.

8. Another example? I can’t remember a U.S. captain telling another player “I love you” on a phone call like this before.

"I love you ... and I'm so proud of you."
— Kyle Porter (@KylePorterNS)
6:55 PM • Aug 27, 2025

I am convinced this U.S. team would swim the Hudson River for him. Keegan is one of the most improbable captains in recent memory, and improbably, he seems like one of the better choices (at least up to this point).

9. The best Zoom jokes from an always-excellent collection.

It also brings me no joy to report that I … I … think I'm all the way in on Cantlay (who I was proud to make laugh on Wednesday, by the way). He is unapologetically himself. I don’t know that I want to be friends with him, but I do kind of enjoy him as a villainous character, especially in the context of this event.

Also, might be a killer.

10. Thinking about not having Keegan as captain is a fascinating thought exercise. Let’s say they got Tiger (the original choice). I think it’s interesting to say that you feel bad for Keegan to be in this spot where he couldn’t be on the team. But would Tiger have picked him if he wasn’t the captain? Probably? Maybe? It would have been really close.

And while I think he ultimately would have been picked in that alternate world, I’m glad (for his own sake) that he got the captaincy in this one.

I just I just can't believe still to this day that I'm the Ryder Cup captain. So I'm never gonna be disappointed with that. There are countless hall of fame players that have never got to do this that have a way better resumes to do this than I do.
So I don't take that lightly and, you know, it's a responsibility that you have to take and do the best of your ability.
Keegan Bradley

11. Don’t let the boys club nonsense distract you from the fact that the U.S. has home field, picked all the right players and has as good of a team if not a better one than the Euros. There are 1,000 ways to look at this, but if Europe does what we think they will do on Monday and selects Rahm, Fitz, Hovland, Ludvig, Sepp and Lowry, here are the numbers from the two teams.

Team 1
Played: 242 events in 2025
Won: 4.1% of the time
op 10: 31%
Top 25: 60%
SG ball striking avg rank: 28.2
SG tee to green avg rank: 26.5
SG overall avg rank: 24.0
Ryder Cup history: Won 53.5% of possible points

Team 2
Played: 249 events
Won: 5.2%
Top 10: 36%
Top 25: 60%
SG ball striking avg rank: 28.7
SG tee to green avg rank: 26.3
SG overall avg rank: 13.7
Ryder Cup history: Won 53.6% of possible points

Those Ryder Cup history numbers are insane. Within 0.1% of each other?

Team answers at the bottom.

Also, who actually has a boys club?

12. Another great Keegan quote.

This has changed me forever. Not only just as a golfer, but as a person. [The team has] brought this different guy out of me as a PGA Tour player.
I'm forever grateful for that.
Keegan Bradley

There are going to be some tears on Sunday evening if the U.S. goes on to win.

13. Here is a dirty little Ryder Cup secret: We haven’t gotten a classic since, what, 2012? Every one since then has been a rout. I need JT or Rory or Morikawa or Lowry standing over a potential winner with no ability to feel their hands or their faces.

Need it.

14. I love, love, love this idea.

[Jason here] Do we really think Brooks will be a captain? And what would a Spieth captaincy look like? Setting up the course so guys have to hit shots off roofs or over tour trucks from the range?

[Kyle back] I do think Brooks will be asked to be a captain. I don’t think an American five-time major winner has been rejected until Phil. My hotter take is that Phil will also eventually be asked. And on Spieth? The answer is always, “sure.”

15. Keegan kept talking about how well everyone handled their calls. Who exactly was expecting to be on the team that wasn’t? There were 13 realistic guys for 12 spots, and the one that got left off was the one delivering the calls.

Regardless, I appreciated Keegan’s viewpoint and empathy for the guys that missed out. He’s been in that No. 14 or No. 15 spot, and I appreciate that he took it seriously.

Also, this remains odd!

And as usual, incredible work by Team Fried Egg.

16. I do have a take on his quote from East Lake from Sunday. Here it is.

The only thing I care about is on Sunday of the Ryder Cup, that we win the Ryder Cup. Then I'll know I made the right decision.
Until then, I won't know. It's going to be pretty wild. Whatever decision we make, we're going to have to live with it. I love the guys on our team. They're all playing great. It's just really something else. It's awesome.
Keegan Bradley

I could not disagree with this more.

Example: If you pick Max Homa for the team after he was a below average PGA Tour player in 2025, and he somehow goes 2-0-1 at Bethpage, does that make it a good decision? No. It was a bad decision based on all the information you had that ended up producing a good result.

Conversely, if you take Cam Young after his great run to close out the season and his skillset which should match Bethpage nicely and he goes 0-3-0, was that a bad decision? No, it was a good decision based on all the information you had that ended up producing a bad result.

If my Twitter mentions are representative of reality, then this is apparently a controversial corner to be on, but I will absolutely ride for this take. I think making determining whether a decision was good or bad based on the outcome is an exhausting (and perhaps even foolish?) way to live.

17. I think it’s awesome that the U.S. has a captain who seems to care about all of this ridiculous stuff even more than we do.

A reminder ⤵️

We will be full Ryder Cup coverage for the next month or so including a few things on our about-to-launch show on YouTube and Spotify.

We’ll look at past moments, what I think about the upcoming matches and are planning on having both me and Jason on site for a full week of the event.

Absolutely cannot wait.

Team 1 = Europe
Team 2 = USA

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Many Thoughts on Keegan’s Picks

Many Thoughts on Keegan’s Picks

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