Scottie Scheffler Shows He's Human, Keegan Bradley Makes A Statement, And U.S. Presidents Cup Team In Trouble

And then there was one. That's it, we've got just one more tournament left on the PGA Tour schedule before we have to endure a grueling offseason of 11 whole days before the Fall Swing, or whatever they're calling it these days, gets underway.

On one hand, it feels like the 2024 PGA Tour season has flown by, but at the same time, 2024 feels like the longest golf campaign in quite some time. Maybe that's due to the Olympics being wedged into the schedule or maybe Scottie Scheffler winning practically every time he's teed it up has made it a bit of a grind.

Nevertheless, we're on to Tour Championship week where we get to complain all week how ridiculous it is that we decide the FedEx Cup champion and winner of $25 million with a staggered leaderboard. Scheffler will start this week's event in Atlanta with a two-shot lead over Xander Schauffele, while other players in the field will begin their week a full 10 shots back from the leader.

That's enough about the future, we have to get into this past week's BMW Championship and Keegan Bradley going from last man in to man in the winner's circle.

Also, apologies for there not being an edition of Par Talk last Monday, life happenings happened.

Keegan Bradley Wins The BMW Championship, Kick Starts Ryder Cup Playing Captain Chatter

Keegan Bradley made it clear after he was surprisingly named the U.S. captain for the 2025 Ryder Cup that he would be trying to earn a spot on the team and serve as a playing captain. He explained that he wouldn't use a captain's pick on himself, which would admittedly be ridiculous, but if he plays his way into an automatic qualifier spot then he would be teeing it up at Bethpage Black next year against Team Europe.

While we're still over a full year away from the start of the 2025 Ryder Cup, Bradley getting the job done at the BMW Championship has rightfully put the thought in everyone's mind that hey, maybe he could actually pull this off. Bradley will have to earn more wins, yes, multiple, between now and the ‘25 Ryder Cup to sniff an automatic spot, but the fact that we’re even discussing this 13 months out from the competition is noteworthy.

Bradley was the last player into the BMW Championship field this past week, and with just one Top 25 finish in his seven previous starts, it certainly felt like he would be content with just making the field and getting into every signature event in 2025 as a Top 50 player in the FedEx Cup standings.

The New England native had very different plans as he began the tournament with an opening round of 66. With his game clearly in a good spot after day one, he carried that momentum into the weekend and had the comfort of bogeying the 72nd hole to earn a one-shot victory over a trio of players.

The win marked the third straight year Bradley has picked up a victory on the PGA Tour and gave him bragging rights at the BMW Championship for the second time in his career.

The golf swing may not be perfect, and he may be one of the twitchiest professional golfers our eyes have ever seen, but it's hard not to pull for Keegan Bradley. The passion the guy has for the game of golf and for his country is unmatched.

You have to tip your cap to the 38-year-old for having one of the all-time great four-week stretches we've seen in quite a while. Going from being named the U.S. Ryder Cup captain on July 31, playing just well enough at the FedEx St. Jude Championship to be lucky No. 50, and then going on to win the BMW to get into the Tour Championship is some pretty-next level stuff, and certainly shows how great he is at handling his emotions.

Scottie Scheffler Doesn't Seem To Be A Fan Of Altitude

Heading into this week's BMW Championship, Scottie Scheffler had made 18 starts on Tour including the Olympics, and only once had he finished worse than T-17, which was a T-41 finish in the U.S. Open at Pinehurst. Over those 18 starts, he picked up six wins, a gold medal, two runner-up finishes, and a grand total of 15 Top 10 finishes. 

Scheffler has earned the nickname Mr. Inevitable this season given that he has looked other-worldly since the start of 2024, but the golf gods may have found his kryptonite at the BMW: altitude and a new-look golf course.

It's safe to say that Scheffler isn't the biggest of fans of Castle Pines Golf Club in Colorado and having to play mathematician in the altitude given that he literally screamed at the golf course and even threw an f-bomb for good measure early in the week.

While he's set to pull off the greatest ball-striking season since prime Tiger Woods, it's always refreshing to see the best player on planet Earth get frustrated. Scheffler is as fierce as they come, and he let's out frustration here and there when things aren't going his way, but the screaming at Castle Pines was the first real example that hey, this ridiculously difficult game isn't always as easy as he makes it look.

Despite potentially not being in the best of form heading into the Tour Championship, it would be an absolute stunner not to see Scheffler not battling for the FedEx Cup trophy come Sunday afternoon. The field spotting him at least a two-shot lead seems unfair, but anything can play out over four days of golf in 100-degree weather at a new-look East Lake. 

The U.S. Presidents Cup Team Has Some Wild Decisions To Make

I'm going to go ahead and get out in front of this before going into detail about the upcoming Presidents Cup and recognize that the Presidents Cup literally does not matter. It really hasn't ever mattered, is and always will be the distant little brother to the Ryder Cup, but it's a Presidents Cup year and there is an intriguing aspect when it comes to the American side.

Both the U.S. and International squads locked in their automatic qualifiers on Sunday at the conclusion of the BMW. 

The six Americans to automatically earn a spot are Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Sahith Theegla, Schauffele, and Scheffler. For the Internationals, their top six include Adam Scott, Sungjae Im, Hideki Matsuyama, Tom Kim, Jason Day, and Byeong Hun An.

While there is legitimately zero argument to be had about which side's Top Six is strongest - it's very clearly the Americans - how U.S. captain Jim Furyk rounds out the squad will be worth keeping an eye on. 

If Furyk goes straight down the standings, the final six players on the U.S. squad would be Sam Burns, Tony Finau, Russell Henley, Keegan Bradley, Brian Harman, and Max Homa. Justin Thomas, Cam Young, and Akshay Bhatia would be three names among the hopefuls that wouldn't be representing the U.S. in that scenario.

Homa hasn't finished inside the Top 30 in his last six starts, but not getting him reps in what could be looked at as a very loose warm-up to next year's Ryder Cup, which he would be among the favorites to make the team, would be a head-scratching decision to some. Then again, a hard reset for Homa and sliding in a 2025 Ryder Cup hopeful would make plenty of sense as well.

The route Furyk and the U.S. staff should take for this year's Presidents Cup is to simply wet the beak of younger players with no experience in either cups that could very easily find their way onto next year's Ryder Cup squad. That group of players would consist of Davis Thompson, Taylor Moore, Austin Eckroat, and Bhatia. Not all four of those players will make the Presidents Cup squad, but one, if not two, should be given a serious look.

After all, the Presidents Cup doesn't matter, remember?