How Keegan Bradley’s caddie found out about Ryder Cup captaincy

It’s been a whirlwind year for Keegan Bradley. Last August, Bradley missed out on being a captain’s pick for the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup team in devastating fashion. Ten months later, Bradley was named captain of the U.S. team for the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black — a stunning surprise. A few weeks after that, Jim Furyk named Bradley an assistant captain for the 2024 Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal in Canada. A few weeks after that, Bradley won the BMW Championship, his seventh career PGA Tour title, then joined the Presidents Cup team as a captain’s pick. Bradley went on to post a 2-1-0 record in the Americans’ victory over the Internationals, 18.5-11.5.

Whew. That’s a lot of action, and there was one man by Bradley’s side through it all: his caddie, Scott Vail.

On this week’s episode of Subpar, Vail told hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz a number of anecdotes about his life and career on Tour, but his story about what it was like to find out his boss was just tapped to be the next U.S. Ryder Cup captain was especially compelling.

“The Monday morning [after the Travelers Championship], I got up at 7 a.m. and I had a text already from him saying — you know, we text back and forth a lot, but we’ve been on the road for like four weeks,” Vail began. “It was weird to have it, you know, straight away the next morning. The text said, ‘Call me, I need to speak to you.’ And I’m like, oh, what did I do? What did I do last week that’s getting me fired today?

“So I pick up the phone immediately. Call him. I’m like, hey, is everything alright? And he’s like, you’re not gonna believe this. And he tells me that they want him as the Ryder Cup captain.

“And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, I was shocked at first, and then I was like, emotional. I was almost crying because I know how much it means to him, how much not being on the team last year meant to him. It was just like this whirlwind of emotions and I’m sitting there kind of like, I’m pretty sure I was crying a little bit.”

Vail has had a front-row seat to Bradley’s anguish and triumph over the past year, and he said he was thrilled for Bradley to have the opportunity to captain the team.

“I know how hard he works and I care for him as a boss, as a friend,” he said. “And yeah, he let me know, and I was like, well, are you gonna do it? You gotta do it, right? Captain America! Bethpage, you went to school there.”

The hardest part, Vail said, was keeping the secret until a formal announcement was made.

“I had to keep my mouth shut for, I think 10 to 14 days,” Vail said. “He’s like, don’t tell anybody. And I’m like, I didn’t tell a soul. And that was hard to do. But yeah, it’s gonna be amazing.”

For more from Vail, including what it was like when Bradley didn’t get good news about the Ryder Cup in 2023, check out the full episode below.

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.