Famed caddie challenges Ryder Cup captains with unique idea

After years of hype, the 2025 Ryder Cup arrives next Friday, September, 26th, at Bethpage Black. The event ends on Sunday, and one famed caddie-turned-TV analyst thinks the Ryder Cup captains should collude to conclude the festivities with a non-traditional bang.

That analyst, former longtime Phil Mickelson caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay, shared his idea on Wednesday, predicting that if the captains followed through, it would both “buck tradition” and “bring the house down.”

Jim “Bones” Mackay floats tradition-breaking end to Ryder Cup

While Mackay has been directly involved with many Ryder Cups on Mickelson’s bag, he also caddied for Justin Thomas at the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome.

This year, though, Mackay won’t be in the U.S. team room at Bethpage Black. Instead, he’ll be walking the fairways in his role as an NBC Sports on-course reporter.

On Wednesday, NBC held a conference call for the NBC Sports Ryder Cup team. All five members of the NBC’s Ryder Cup TV crew — Dan Hicks, Brad Faxon, Paul McGinley, Smylie Kaufman and Mackay — took part.

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Each offered some opening remarks before questions began, and that’s when Mackay, speaking fourth, dropped his big idea for Ryder Cup Sunday.

After declaring his excitement for the tournament, which he called “my favorite event… in all of sports,” Mackay took advantage of his time to reveal that his dream would be for Ryder Cup captains Keegan Bradley and Luke Donald to come together and match World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler against World No. 2 Rory McIlroy in Sunday’s singles matches.

“And all I’ll say is that I think that if it hasn’t already been said, I would love if things look really close as we head into Sunday, if the two captains, Keegan Bradley and Luke Donald, who are close friends, could find 60 seconds for themselves and for the good of the game, maybe find a way to see that Rory [McIlroy] and Scottie [Scheffler] play each other in singles on Sunday,” Mackay proffered on Wednesday.

Mackay continued by arguing that if the captains bought into his idea, it would take the excitement and interest levels to a whole other level.

“I think at a close Ryder Cup that would basically bring the house down in terms of the excitement that everyone sees around the play there on Sunday, and of course, a close competition,” Mackay said.

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Why this would ‘buck tradition’ at Ryder Cup

So what’s so unique about Mackay’s Sunday singles idea? It comes down to how Sunday singles matches are determined at Ryder Cups.

Following the second session of matches on Ryder Cup Saturday, the captains make final decisions about when their respective players will compete in Sunday singles. All 12 players on each team have to play a singles match, so ultimately the captains are deciding what order they will play on Sunday.

But there’s one crucial wrinkle to this process that impacts Mackay’s idea: the captains don’t choose the Sunday matches together. Instead, they choose their teams’ playing orders in private without knowing what the other captain is doing.

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For example, Donald could decide he wants to start Sunday on the right foot with his best player, McIlroy, playing in the first match. But Bradley would not be privy to that decision. Bradley could instead decide that he wants his best player, Scheffler, to lock down the final match in case the score gets tight. In that case, McIlroy and Scheffler would be playing on the opposite ends of the tee sheet.

For the two top golfers to play each other on Sunday, Donald and Bradley would have to slot them into the same match blind.

That is unless Donald and Bradley took Mackay’s advice and broke this rule by meeting and planning out the matchups together.

“I think it would be really cool if they could find a way and buck tradition and see that those guys play each other,” Mackay said.

Rory McIlroy-Jim Mackay Ryder Cup controversy

As Mackay noted in his opening remarks, he’s been at every Ryder Cup “inside the ropes since 1993,” most of the time as Mickelson’s caddie.

But the 2023 Ryder Cup arrived at a time when Mackay was temporarily carrying the bag of U.S. Ryder Cup mainstay Justin Thomas. That’s how Mackay got into the middle of the biggest controversy from the last Ryder Cup.

Toward the end of Saturday’s matches, Rory McIlroy, other members of the European team, Patrick Cantlay and Cantlay’s caddie Joe LaCava, got into a dust-up on the course, when a hat-waving celebration by the U.S. team caught the ire of McIlroy.

The dispute spilled off the course, too. Later that night, McIlroy got involved in a parking-lot shouting match with someone on the U.S. team. In a video of the incident, Mackay can be seen trying, and failing, to calm McIlroy down.

Eventually, Shane Lowry had to hold McIlroy back from escalating the encounter, forcing him into a waiting courtesy car.