Keegan Bradley on Picking the US Ryder Cup Roster, the Team’s Ralph Lauren Uniforms, and His Top 3 Air Jordans

In late September, the fiercest rivalry in golf will descend upon Long Island’s famed Bethpage Black. Known lovingly as “The People’s Country Club,” this mecca of New York public golf—and one of the hardest courses in the world—will play host to the Ryder Cup, the team match-play tournament in which the 12 best American golfers compete against their counterparts from the UK and Europe.

Much of the intrigue surrounding this year’s iteration has centered on Keegan Bradley, the US team’s 39-year-old captain. A major champion and former Ryder Cupper himself, Bradley hasn’t played on the team since 2014 but has been striving to tee it up for the red, white, and blue ever since. When he was named captain last summer—a move that at first surprised many golf pundits—he initially said that he would only play on the team if he qualified on points as one of the top-six American players and wouldn’t use a “Captain’s Pick” for one of the other six spots on himself.

Courtesy of Ralph Lauren

While he narrowly missed out on automatic qualification, Bradley has gone on to have a stellar 2025 season on the course, punctuated by a cathartic victory at the Travelers Championship in June. His performances have led to much speculation that he may, in fact, pick himself for the team—and perhaps deservedly so.

Whomever Bradley winds up selecting, when the tournament kicks off on September 26, the US team will be suited up in killer new gear from Polo Ralph Lauren. In addition the bold, graphic, red-white-and-blue uniforms that the players will wear on the fairways, the venerable label has also dropped a collection of cheeky merch commemorating the tournament, including tees and sweatshirts starring the Polo Bear in front of Bethpage’s iconic warning sign.

Courtesy of Ralph Lauren

Courtesy of Ralph Lauren

In between the final two tournaments of the PGA Tour playoffs, GQ caught up with Bradley at Ralph Lauren’s New York flagship to chat about the newly unveiled US team uniforms and his preparations for captaining the squad at Bethpage Black.

GQ: What sort of input did you have with the Ralph Lauren team on the design and styling of the US Ryder Cup team uniforms?

Keegan Bradley: I really wanted them to be heavily red, white, and blue. I never liked when you turned on the Ryder Cup and they were in a strange color. Ralph Lauren is great because it’s so American, so the red, white, and blue is easy to do here. For us, this has become our national uniform. It’s an amazing moment in your career when you show up to the course at the Ryder Cup and go to your locker and it’s all hanging in there.

[Laughs.] Yeah, we tested every single aspect of the uniforms down to the waterproof jackets. There are little things that you may not think of as a player, so when you’re on the other side as a Captain, you see what goes into those details.

You’ve talked a lot about how meaningful it is to captain the team, especially at Bethpage, where you spent a lot of time while you were playing in college at St. John’s. Given your experience with it, have you been involved in the course setup at all?

Yeah, the home captain has a lot more duties in terms of the course setup. We look at the analytics to support the setup and to help our guys play better. There’s definitely a blueprint for what the Americans have done and then what the Europeans have done, but this is a different team. So I want to set up our guys the best I can.

This Bethpage Black isn’t going to be set up like a major. This isn’t going to be a US Open with your typical chip-out rough that we’re used to seeing, but it’s going to be the stage of an incredible event. It’s important for us to make birdies and really get the crowd going. This is such an iconic venue and we can set the course up with foot-high rough or no rough, but ultimately it’s going to come down to whoever plays better.