Keegan Bradley’s Ryder Cup game plan begins to take shape in Napa

NAPA, Calif. – U.S. Ryder Cup front man Keegan Bradley said at last month’s Tour Championship that he couldn’t wait to make his six wildcard picks and turn the page to the actual job of captaining.

On Tuesday at Silverado Resort, some of that work was on display as 10 of Bradley’s dozen players for this year’s matches headed out to prepare for the Procore Championship, the first fall event on the PGA Tour docket and, more compelling, the final tune-up for the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

The decision to assemble the U.S. team — with only Xander Schauffele, who is at home with his wife in South Florida following the birth of the couple’s first child, and Bryson DeChambeau, who isn’t qualified to play the Tour event as a member of LIV Golf, absent — was born from the American loss two years ago in Rome.

“Keegan brought it up to a couple guys early on about playing [the Procore Championship] and everybody was immediately all in,” Justin Thomas said. “The rust that some guys had in Rome was a little bit of a learning experience. It’s a chance for us to come here and stay a lot sharper and don’t feel like we’re starting the week from scratch at Bethpage.”

Aside from knocking off the competitive rust, for a captain trying to hit all the right notes, it’s also a chance for he and his team to hone the game plan for Bethpage Black, which will host the Ryder Cup later this month.

It didn’t take much parsing on Day 1 of practice in the Napa Valley to see a compelling pattern, with each group offering a glimpse into Bradley’s potential pairings.

With an eye towards Friday’s foursomes session at Bethpage, Harris English and Collin Morikawa went out first Tuesday, along with vice captain Webb Simpson. In the demanding alternate-shot format, both are consistent ball-strikers, combining Morikawa’s long-iron game and English’s short game for a potent combination.

In the second group, Scottie Scheffler, Russell Henley and J.J. Spaun played with vice captain Gary Woodland. Scheffler and Henley went 1-1-0 in foursomes action at last year’s Presidents Cup and seem a likely team.

In the final foursome on Tuesday, Thomas, Cameron Young, Sam Burns and Patrick Cantlay played together. As the most veteran member of Team USA, Thomas is Bradley’s plug-and-play option, with an eye toward a potential pairing with Young, who grew up playing Bethpage and would be a fan favorite from the outset.

The sign of any good Ryder Cup captain is not leaving anything to chance, and Keegan Bradley is off to a solid start.

Ben Griffin, one of Bradley’s four rookies for this year’s matches, arrived later in the day and played alongside vice captain Brandt Snedeker.

The Rounds 1 and 2 pairings for Thursday and Friday mirror much of what Bradley was trying to accomplish on Tuesday at Silverado Resort, which suggests this week’s schedule is far from haphazard.

But the captain, who was perched behind the first tee early Tuesday waiting for his team, seemed less interested in formats than he was in formalities, with each team member playing his own ball and preparing the way he would for any other Tour event. Of all the data points needed to conjure a good pairing, the intangibles might matter most.

“Every round, every shot you see someone hit, the more you see, the more you’re around, the more comfortable and easier it is,” Thomas said. “The more opportunity we have to be around each other and just hang it’s good.”

Bradley is not playing this week’s Procore Championship, trading his golf clubs for a set of cart keys. Some have compared this week’s event to spring training for the U.S. team but it felt more like a combine, with the entire squad scheduled for a team dinner Tuesday.

That includes DeChambeau, who is not playing but is in Napa this week for Tuesday’s dinner and other team functions. Bradley is sharing a house with his vice captains, which also includes Jim Furyk, and said he plans to keep the door open all week for players and caddies to bond and game plan for the matches.

Bradley admitted it was an odd feeling walking onto the range at an event where he is not playing. “I can tell you the last time that happened,” he said with a smile. ” I was 13 and it was Hartford [now the Travelers Championship].”

Despite the novelty of it all, after wrestling with himself for weeks about his captain’s picks, including a popularly held notion that he should be one of his six picks, Bradley has fully embraced the art and science of being a captain.