Tiger Woods leaves a big Ryder Cup question unanswered

TROON, Scotland — Tiger Woods has a lot going on these days. He’s on the PGA Tour Policy Board. He’s a vice chairman of the PGA Tour Enterprises board. He’s sitting on three-hour sub-committee calls, he said Tuesday morning from the Open Championship. 

He’s also trying to be the best golfer he can be, competing exclusively in the toughest tournaments on the planet. He’s been training harder lately, he said Tuesday, his body able to handle more than it used to. He just had his 3-iron bent one degree stiffer for this week alone. Clearly, Woods is hard at it trying to be Tiger Woods The Golfer and Tiger Woods The Leader. It just doesn’t leave much room for Tiger Woods, Ryder Cup captain. 

“I’m on so many different subcommittees that it just takes so much time in the day, and I’m always on calls,” Woods said. “I felt — I told Seth [Waugh, the former PGA of America CEO] that I just didn’t feel like I could do the job properly. I couldn’t devote the time … there’s only so many hours in the day.

“I just didn’t feel like I would be doing the captaincy or the players in Team USA justice if I was the captain with everything that I have to do.”

Woods is correct about a few things there, namely that there are only so many hours in a day. The PGA of America held out as long as it could for Woods to accept the post, ultimately offering the job to Keegan Bradley a full four months later than normal. But Woods’ prominence in the game allowed him some patience. He was certainly interested in taking the spot, but just didn’t see it manifesting successfully.

“I think that this is going to be probably a turnover year for us for the captaincies,” Woods said. “Whether it’s the captain itself and his vice captains. I think this is the natural progression, one we’ve been looking forward to, and I think it’s that year.”

What he means by turnover is unclear, but Woods has been involved with the Ryder Cup task force in the last decade and Team USA’s approach to building momentum in the biennial event. While he hasn’t been directly involved on-site since being a vice captain in 2016, Woods was sending inspirational texts to American players during a record-setting victory at Whistling Straits in 2021.

It was Woods taking a pass on the captaincy that left the golf world a bit stunned by Bradley’s appointment. Virtually everyone involved in Ryder Cup USA was surprised at the choice, but most are now embracing what will be a 39-year-old captain on Long Island next fall, who could ultimately be a playing-captain. It’s possible that Woods will be invited to be a vice captain on Bradley’s team, just as he was for Davis Love during the ’16 Cup, but even that idea is too much for Woods to process at the moment. When asked if he’d entertain a vice captaincy Woods refused to go down that hypothetical path, saying bluntly, “He hasn’t asked me.” 

Of course, Bradley hasn’t named any vice captains for his team. That’ll happen over the next six months or so. At the moment, he is joined by John Wood, a multiple-time Ryder Cup caddie, who was appointed Team Manager for next year’s Cup and moving forward. Wood was in New York with Bradley last week when the news was officially announced and made a site visit to Bethpage Black ahead of this week’s Open Championship. 

Tiger fans will have to remain patient for their man to take on the captaincy, but the questions will no doubt continue, even regarding the next Ryder Cup, in 2027 at Adare Manor in Ireland. Woods has maintained a close friendship with Irish philanthropist J.P. McManus — the owner of Adare Manor — which makes many people think he’d consider captaining the American team that year. Woods said he knows it’s “near and dear” to McManus that Woods be involved in that Ryder Cup, but he’ll have to assess his workload when the captaincy becomes available in 2026. 

“As I said, I’ll put my hat in the ring again when I have more time and I feel like I can devote myself to a Ryder Cup,” Woods said. “As of right now, I’ve got so many different things I’m juggling and trying to get right at the same time for all the players that are a part of the PGA Tour. It’s one of those things where you just can’t get it wrong.” 

The 2027 Ryder Cup will be the next opportunity for Team USA to end its three-decade drought of winning a Cup in Europe. The last time the Americans triumphed on the road was in 1993 at The Belfry.