[PHOTO: Michael Reaves/PGA of America]
Like any Ryder Cup captain, Keegan Bradley faced plenty of decisions this past week at Bethpage Black, from pairings to dinners to even which player’s name to put in an envelope. But when it was all said and done, he revealed his biggest regret was actually something done before the event even started.
Bradley’s squad made a valiant Sunday rally before losing 15-13, and in the aftermath, he was asked if there was anything he would have done differently. Most golf fans would assume that he’d list a personnel decision (the disastrous Collin Morikawa–Harris English pairing certainly comes to mind!) if anything, but instead he went with something else.
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“I think I would have set the course up a little different,” Bradley said before quickly adding, “But I don’t know, they played better than us. They deserved to win. They’re a great team. In my eyes, Luke Donald is the best European Ryder Cup captain of all time.”
Home Ryder Cup captains have been able to dictate how the course is set up since 1957. There has been a trend for American captains to cut the rough short in order to help longer hitters, which, traditionally, has favoured the Americans.
That was certainly the case this week at Bethpage Black, a course that had hosted two US Opens and a difficult PGA Championship in 2019. But this week turned into a birdie-fest with shorter rough and soft greens that got even softer after heavy rain on Thursday. And that’s where Bradley’s main issue stemmed from.
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“Oh, man, the greens are not where we wanted,” Bradley said on Saturday night. “They are super-soft. The greens are great. They roll great. But you’re actually – you’re actually better off out of the rough to a bunch of these flags, a bunch of these pins… I’ve never seen Bethpage greens play this soft – ever. Even when we’ve played here and it’s rained, this is something that I’ve never seen. Chip shots are spinning backwards.”
On Sunday, he made similar comments.
“We tried to set the course up to help our team,” Bradley said. “Obviously it wasn’t the right decision,” Bradley said. “I think anytime you’re the leader of a team or the captain or the coach, or whatever, we talked about this last night, you’re going to get the accolades and you need to take the blame for when things don’t go well.
“I definitely made a mistake on the course setup. I should have listened a little bit more to my intuition. For whatever reason, that wasn’t the right way to set the course up. The greens were as soft as I’ve ever seen greens without it raining. Especially here, it can get pretty firm, and they never firmed up.”
Again, there’s only so much you can do about a course getting soaked with rain, but the greens could have been cut shorter to get their speed up. In fact, a member of the US team was overheard on Friday saying the greens needed to be made much faster. There’s just one problem with that: home captains lose control over the course setup the Sunday before the event starts. Here’s how it’s spelled out in the captain’s agreement (with dates for last time at Marco Simone in Rome):
It is recognised that the home side has the opportunity to influence and direct the setup and preparation of the course for the Ryder Cup. It is hereby agreed that any such influence, direction and/or preparation will be limited to course architecture/course design, fairway widths, rough heights, green speed and firmness, and will conclude the Sunday prior to the matches (Sunday, September 24th 2023). From Monday, September 25th 2023 all daily decisions related to course preparation/setup including frequency and height of mowing tees, fairways and greens, determining if the greens should be rolled to maintain speed, firmness and smoothness, and selecting tees and pin positions, will be the responsibility of the Match Committee alone. The Match Committee is made up of one representative from both Ryder Cup Europe and the PGA of America. This is done to maintain the integrity of the Ryder Cup.
Would cutting the grass less in the rough and more on the greens have changed the outcome? We’ll never know. But Bradley probably shouldn’t look at the dry weather forecast for Long Island next week.
