How Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, others took over Ryder Cup process

ROME – After Keegan Bradley learned he wasn’t selected as a captain’s pick for the U.S. Ryder Cup team, he poured his heart out to Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis.

“I’ve always been an outsider in the sport but I have tried to get closer to the guys I thought would be on the team,” Bradley said. “I feel like moving forward I’m going to have to automatically qualify for the Ryder Cup.”

For Bradley, being snubbed for the team was an extension of being left out of the meeting of the “Delaware 23” in Wilmington, Delaware, during the 2022 BMW Championship when Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler flew in to meet with roughly the Tour’s top-20 players in an effort to remake the PGA Tour.

Bradley isn’t the only one who feels as if the U.S. Ryder Cup has become a little “too clubby,” a bit “too cliquish,” too much of a “boys’ club.” Stewart Cink is the only new blood to this year’s back room for U.S. Captain Zach Johnson, but even he isn’t sure whether he would have been invited to be in the cool club if Phil Mickelson hadn’t been banished from the U.S. Ryder Cup’s inner circle for the things he said before leaving for LIV Golf.

“I have felt a little bit like that, like I was just on the outside of a certain circle,” Cink told Golfweek. “I don’t necessarily feel exactly the same way (Keegan) does, though, because I hesitate – I’ve got to be careful what I say. I didn’t feel like I was outside of any circle.  I felt like there was a specific – OK, I’m not going to go there. I don’t want to say. I’ll just say this. I have felt similarly to the way Keegan says that he feels about being a little bit on the outside, a little bit maybe not in the fraternity necessarily. Just being a little bit of a different personality, plenty of experience, but not necessarily like in the club. It’s hard to get in if you’re not in.”

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The fraternity that Cink refers to may be more the Tri-Lambs of “Revenge of the Nerds” fame than the bullying Alpha Betas. After all, at Stanford, Tiger Woods was nicknamed “Erkel,” a reference to the goofball character Steve Erkel on the TV show “Family Matters,” Davis Love III was called Dufus, and Mickelson Figjam – if you don’t know why, Google it. So how did all these dorks end up at the cool table?

It goes back to the 2014 Ryder Cup when the U.S. side was blown out in Scotland, its sixth loss in seven playings of the…