There will be a single point of overwhelming interest when Keegan Bradley finalises his US Ryder Cup team on Wednesday. Will he obey President Trump by picking himself or won’t he? The muted expectation across the Atlantic is that he will.
It is some measure of this unique, chaotic staging post in his captaincy that opinions around whether or not he should play at Bethpage Black next month have been forthcoming from all directions, including the White House.
For more than a year, the dilemma has existed as a problem for another day, but the decision over which six picks will augment his half-dozen qualifiers cannot be kicked any further down the road. The music stops at 4pm BST.
If he reads out his own name, giving the Cup its first player-captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963, he will be honouring Trump’s wishes and no doubt thrilling those Europeans who are adamant it is a recipe for disaster.
Europe’s captain Luke Donald, a man not given to provocative words, and indeed a close friend of Bradley, would never say as much, but the US have made such a hash of this scenario that the chances of a rare away win have been increased substantially.
It has been 59 weeks since Bradley was plucked from left-field and named captain after Tiger Woods led the PGA of America down the garden path and promptly jumped the fence. In their jilted panic, those responsible for the US team turned to a man with whom they had not once consulted in the recruitment process – his first call from them was a job offer. Remarkable, really.
If that was an example of a flawed process, then the real farce comes from the predictability of this current problem.
Bradley was No 19 in the world at the time of his appointment and today he stands at No 11, oozing the kind of passion for the Cup that has often been conspicuous in its absence among the US side. Their demand for $500,000 apiece to play is part of that perception.
Objectively, Bradley is clearly one of their best 12 golfers on form that included a Tour-level win just nine weeks ago.
But whether he can juggle captaincy with playing – an undertaken not performed since the Cup was a garden fete by comparison to today’s three-ring circus – is at the crux of his decision.
Rory McIlroy’s long-held view is that it is ‘impossible to do both’ jobs and Sir Nick Faldo laughed when I asked him about such a prospect last week.
‘I’d like that from a European perspective,’ he said. ‘It’s probably impossible, but the Americans can worry about that.’
With Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, JJ Spaun, Russell Henley, Harris English and Bryson DeChambeau already in, Bradley realistically must choose the next six from a pool of Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young, Ben Griffin, Sam Burns, Chris Gotterup and himself.
Thomas is perceived as close to a certainty and Cantlay – he of the hat protest in Rome – is considered more likely than not to get the nod.
The rest are more open, but according to several sources, Bradley will back himself, with some of the responsibilities handed to vice-captain Jim Furyk, after a recently-amended Captain’s Agreement allowed the latter to take charge of certain duties when he is on the course.
Bradley has described it as the ‘biggest decision’ of his life, which, in keeping with other discussions around Ryder Cup captaincy over the years, was perhaps a touch overblown.
Even the best captains have limits to their impact, and historically those tend to be of far less consequence than a partisan crowd when the teams are evenly matched.
If Bradley plays and the US lose, his decision will be ridiculed forevermore; if he plays and wins, we might conclude the role is buffeted by too much fuss. A mess that the Americans brought upon themselves stands to test that latter theory more than ever before.
