New Ryder Cup U.S. captain Keegan Bradley tells Tiger Woods he can get ‘as involved as he wants to be’

Past meets future this week in Blaine.

That’s where both 2023 Ryder Cup U.S. captain Zach Johnson and recently named 2025 captain Keegan Bradley are both playing in the 3M Open.

They saw each other Tuesday on the putting green and chatted about Bradley making Webb Simpson his first vice captain this week for next year’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black on Long Island, N.Y.

“I’ve heard from a lot of captains, texts and congratulatory stuff,” Bradley said. “When the season’s over, I’ll really start reaching out to the old captains and sort of picking their brains on what they thought they did right, what they thought they did wrong. Winning captains, losing captains both. I think you can learn a lot from that.”

And yes, he talked with Tiger Woods at last week’s British Open.

“I’ve told Tiger that I want him to be as involved as he wants to be,” Bradley said. “With the British Open going on, we’re not really chatting too much about that. We both have a job to do and I don’t want to bother Tiger with that. We’re still 14 months out, so we’ve got a long time.”

Bradley is 38 and a six-time PGA Tour winner, including the 2011 PGA Championship. He also made the 2012 and 2014 Ryder Cup teams.

Bradley was named captain two weeks ago, but he knew nearly three weeks before that.

“It has been really great seeing the players,” Bradley said. “I sat on being the Ryder Cup captain for almost three weeks without anybody know and that was tough. So being out here and seeing the guys, especially last week at the British Open and then coming here, it has been really great. It has been a real therapeutic thing to see the guys.”

Defending champion Lee Hodges considers himself a winner all over again this week, just because he arrived on time.

Some of his competitors were delayed by the worldwide tech outage that particularly disrupted players coming from Sunday’s Barracuda Championship in the Lake Tahoe area.

Golfer Wesley Bryan and another player’s caddie rented a vehicle in connecting Salt Lake City without a one-way return policy and drove 16 hours to Blaine.

“I didn’t have any trouble, how about that?” Hodges said. “I’m already one shot ahead because there’s a lot of guys that had a hard time getting here.”

Troy Merritt attended Spring Lake Park High School “just 10, 12 minutes down the road” from TPC Twin Cities and has plenty of family and friends who still live nearby. Many of them want free tickets, particularly on Friday.

“I keep getting more and more for Friday,” Merritt said. “Apparently nobody expects me around this weekend.”

Merritt has missed the cut twice in five 3M Opens back home, in 2020 and 2023. His best finish was the tournament’s first year, a tie for 7th. He also finished tied for 39th in 2021 and tied for 49th in 2022.

Merritt calls a return to the place he once called home “rejuvenating” because he gets to see family and friends he doesn’t on other tour stops.

They took his niece to Tuesday’s Twins game for her fifth birthday. He planned to attend her last tee-ball game on Wednesday night. He’ll miss some of Thursday’s birthday party because of his late-wave tee time.

“Most weeks I’m kind of a hermit off the course,” Merritt said. “But this week I get to go out and see some fresh faces I haven’t seen in years and reminisce about days gone by. It’s just a nice, relaxing week.”