All week long, Northern Ohio Golf contributor Tim Rogers will be writing from the Kaulig Companies Championship at Firestone Country Club. Today, Rogers sits down with former Ryder Cup captain and two-time Kaulig Companies Championship winner Steve Stricker to get his thoughts on the newly named American captain, Keegan Bradley.
If you want advice on finances you would go to Warren Buffett, right?
If you want advice on legal matters, you would go to Alan Dershowitz, no?
If you want advice on repairing rotator cuffs, you would call Dr. James Andrews, wouldn’t you?
If you were looking for advice on scientific endeavors, you would go to Stephen Hawking, you know, if he wasn’t dead.
If Keegan Bradley wants advice on how to win the Ryder Cup, he wouldn’t go wrong if he went to Steve Stricker.
Stricker, who will begin defense of his Kaulig Companies Championship on Thursday at Firestone Country Club, was the team captain of one of the most successful U.S. teams in modern Ryder Cup history.
His team in 2020 – or 2021, thanks to Covid – whacked Europe, 19-9 at Whistling Straits, when it went 8-4 in Sunday singles matches. Its 19 points were the most scored by either side since 1979. Dustin Johnson went 5-0 and Collin Morikawa went 3-0-1 and closed out the Cup. And a relative unknown at the time by the name of Scottie Scheffler, who had not won a PGA Tour event and was a captain’s pick, went 2-0-1 and knocked off Jon Rahm, then the No. 1 ranked player in the world.
“We had a deep lineup,” Stricker said Wednesday during a press interview. “Covid helped us a little bit, to be quite honest with you, because we took away a lot of the distractions that week on purpose. It just became about golf, being prepared, getting conversations with the guys leading up to it and just making sure everybody was on the same page and comfortable with what was going on.”
The Cup in 2021 came at the height of the Brooks Koepka vs. Bryson DeChambeau fiasco. That had to be a pain in the backside. Will Bradley face similar adversity with the PGA vs. LIV issue?
“We went through the challenges like any other team,” said Stricker. “We had the Brooks and Bryson saga that I had to manage a little bit. All of a sudden, they got to the point where they wanted to play with each other. There were some things that beforehand that we kind of had to address and they were taken care of.”
Stricker, who has won twice on the famed South Course, believes that Ryder Cup was the event that jump-started Scheffler’s career.
Will a Davis Thompson or an Akshay Bhatia or a Maverick McNealy – don’t even think about 15-year-old phenom Miles Russell just yet – be the next Scottie Scheffler?
So, what advice does Stricker have for the newest Captain America?
“I think the word, the best thing I could say to him is just be yourself,” Stricker said. “Just stay true to yourself, believe in what he’s doing.”
No question, Stricker is a fan of Bradley’s.
“I think he’ll do a great job with it,” he said. “I think his passion each and every week, let alone in the Ryder Cup, speaks for itself. He knows the players, he’s out there every day, he knows what’s going on. He’s going to communicate with them and just be true to himself and his beliefs. I think he’s going to do a great job if he does that.”
He also does not downplay the difficulty of being a Ryder Cup captain.
“It’s time consuming,” he said. “The biggest part is it’s the mental capacity that you need to have for it. There’s always something. You want to make sure it’s a wonderful week for the players, the wives, girlfriends, whoever’s going to be there. So, it consumes a lot of your time mentally and that’s the part he needs to prepare for. The good thing is that he has 14 months to get going.”
Yes, 14 months can be a benefit. It also is enough time for all kinds of stuff to happen. Being prepared to deal with it is the key. Stricker was prepared and for the sake of the USA, let’s hope Bradley is too.
