NAPA, CA – Keegan Bradley was standing in the middle of the eighth fairway on the Silverado Resort North Course.
“This has a better shot to go to the hole than that right bunker,” Bradley joked as Scotty Schaeffler hit a wedge shot. Of course, the ball finished the pin high.
No pressure was found to hit his own golf shot, prepare for the tournament and sweat the putt as Bradley rode the cart and bounced back and forth between two foursomes, including seven Ryder Cup team members and one assistant captain during Tuesday’s nine-hole practice at the Pro Core Championship.
With PGA Tour season over and the team is set to stone, all eyes are on Beth Page. So, all eyes are on Bradley and the 12 players who want him to win the captain. This week, it also meant that the typical quiet PGA Tour Fall event in Napa Valley has become a Ryder Cup rendezvous.
“I think players knew it was important,” Bradley said. “This Ryder Cup means everything to them, and we’ll talk a lot behind the scenes about how much this means to us.
Unlike in 2023, when most of the American teams did not play in other golf events leading to a 16.5-11.5 Ryder Cup defeat in Rome, 10 of the 12 team members are on the field this week, playing each other in the first and second rounds of the tournament.
Liv’s Bryson Dechambeau is not on the field, but he traveled to Napa for the main event. Tuesday night, dinner at the team house where Bradley and Deputy Colonel are staying this week. The only other member of the US team not present is Xander Schaufele, who just welcomed the birth of his first child.
According to Bradley, this was part of his plan when he was given a captain as a way to sharpen players and build chemistry, but it was the players who led the charges to make it happen. Schaufler said he and Schaufere spoke about what they hoped to go back to the beginning of the year at the event.
“It’s rare for the Master or the US to take four to five weeks off before something like that, so there’s no reason to enter the Ryder Cup,” said Schaeffler, who didn’t score all the points in Rome. “You can practice and do everything you can at home to stay in Sharp, but there’s something different about competing.”
This week, players certainly seemed to take that approach. On Tuesday morning, Silverado’s bustling putting green featured Justin Thomas, using a long curtain to measure the grade of the slope while Russell Henry did his own putting drill next to him. On the other hand, Schaeffler’s caddy Ted Scott prepared several golf balls for Schaeffler’s own putting practice.
Near the range, Harris English worked on his wedge game, but right next to him, Morikawa was hitting with the driver on a cloudy morning, when a truckman measured his numbers and two cameras filmed his swing.
Soon they walked to the first tee and set off with assistant captain Webb Simpson. Bradley walked through some holes with them. There were no official words from Bradley, but how the practice was structured round and tournament tee times were inevitable that it would shed light on potential pairings.
English and Morikawa practiced together and were paired together in the first two rounds of the event. Patrick Cantray, Sam Burns, Cam Young and Justin Thomas completed another foursome, with Schaeffler’s practice round containing Henry’s familiar face.
“It was cool to just look at other aspects of the players, just look at their actions on the course, so that they only look at their actions on the course,” said Spaun, an open winner in the US and Ryder Cup rookie. “We’re just trying to make comrades. We’re hanging out a lot together. Once we got to Beth Page, we got off to the start of that way.”
They maintained a typical practice round routine of hitting different putts and chips around the green, but Spaun said they also try to simulate matchplay scenarios as much as possible by playing best ball style matches within the group.
“We’re (90 percent),” Bradley said when asked how close he was to know what those pairings were. “One of our goals was to prepare people who were ready to know who they were playing with, especially with alternative shots.”
Although not explicitly spoken, there was an undercurrent of comparison between what the US was wrong under Zach Johnson’s Greatest in 2023 and how they were trying to do things differently under Bradley. Morikawa said Wednesday that there are many differences in the way Bradley handles everything.
“Kegan was very open to talking to many of us. Many players just ask what he can do to make the (Rider Cup) week much easier,” Morikawa said. “He’s open to hearing all the suggestions we can from all of us, and how to make it as normal as possible, go out there and do what it takes to put the points on the board.”
In many ways, it also helped Napa and this tournament be an ideal environment for this. The juxtaposition of players like Schaeffler and Morikawa, along with travelers who play this event in hoping to maintain their tour cards, created their own dynamics similar to the creeks of cool kids at summer camp, the relaxed nature of the settings, and the “writer scene” that Bradley places, but has become an effective place to relax in front of Hoopra on Long Island.
The vibe was expensive on Tuesday. Bradley, assistant Jim Furik (Bradley was the captain of last year’s President’s Cup team), team manager John Wood and several of the team’s data specialists walked the grounds and watched the players interact with each other.
After the nine-hole practice round was over, players mixed in, lined up in long lines for burger dogs, and spoke a bit about various topics while waiting for the delicateness of the famous region. It was a moment when this situation was designed to bring Beth Pages in and create.
“This is probably the most different thing I’ve ever attended a golf event,” Woodland said. “Usually, I’m focused. I’m alone. (This week) we’re going out with everyone. We’re talking. We’re really preparing for two weeks, right?
Woodland was a unique choice by Bradley. Like Brandt Snedeker, Webb Simpson and Kevin Kisner, the four selections are slightly younger than their previous assistant captains, still playing occasionally at tour events and knowing the players on their team well. That’s because of design, Woodland said.
“I’ve talked to people who’s like, ‘This is not,'” Woodland said. “They have no issues picking up the phone and calling me. I know them on a personal level.
On Wednesday, Bradley spoke about the approach and admitted that the choice to make him the US captain was a shocking one no one had hoped for. But that decision is a catalyst for what Bradley says he is approaching the whole process.
“I think that’s important. I’m trying to remind myself that I was chosen to do this job. “To be a captain is not the current state of what the US did. We always remember that we were chosen to do this job because we wanted a little change in what we were doing.”
The slightest changes that Bradley adopted ranged from organizing the entire week to erasing tasks he could do before he arrived in New York, maintaining group chats with his teams and opening them up more personally to the whole group.
“I’ve known Keegan for 15 years. We’ve had a lot around each other. I’ve never seen him like this,” Woodland said. “He’s very open, and you can see how much it means to him.”
With the Ryder Cup still two weeks apart, Napa felt like a deliberate honeymoon stage for the American team. Everyone says the right thing, compiles Bradley’s instructions, showing a united front where the tasks in front of them are ready. But while the lead-up may be different, the previous team was the first to say they didn’t make a winning team for the Ryder Cup in a week at Napa. Team dinners do not correlate directly with Pat. And even additional preparations don’t always decide who will lift the cup on Sunday.
However, if you’re a Bradley team, players will look back this week as a key part of this Ryder Cup, and perhaps a future cup preparation.
“Do you know?” Bradley said. “From now on, this could be part of what we do every year.”