Xander Schauffele’s 1 request for U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley

Count Xander Schauffele among the PGA Tour stars shocked by the announcement that Keegan Bradley — not presumptive first-choice Tiger Woods — will captain the U.S. Ryder Cup team in September 2025 at Bethpage Black.

“Yeah, it’s surprising,” the reigning PGA Championship winner said Tuesday at his press conference ahead of the Genesis Scottish Open. “You typically expect someone that’s a little bit older to get selected as a captain. I think a lot of people expected Tiger to do it. He obviously has a lot on his plate. Keegan expressed his love for the Ryder Cup publicly, which we all saw.”

“I haven’t talked to him or seen him yet but I’m sure he’s over the moon and is going to do a great job.”

Tiger, 48, turned down the opportunity to steer his first Ryder Cup squad, citing his various behind-the-scenes duties for the PGA Tour. The 15-time major champion is a vice president of PGA Tour Enterprises, and serves on the PGA Tour policy board and on a special subcommittee tasked with negotiating with LIV Golf’s backer, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.

‘With my new responsibilities to the Tour and time commitments involved, I felt like I would not be able to commit the time to Team USA and the players required as a captain,’ Woods said in a statement. ‘That does not mean I wouldn’t want to captain a team in the future. If and when I feel it is the right time, I will put my hat in the ring for this committee to decide.”

Bradley, 38, will be the youngest U.S. Ryder Cup captain since Arnold Palmer. The six-time PGA Tour winner was curiously snubbed by captain Zach Johnson for the doomed 2023 team — a storyline gut-wrenchingly captured in Netflix’s Full Swing.

“I really was rooting for those guys,” Bradley told me in March. “That was real. My wife and I — we both wanted them to win and do well. But, it was important, someday, for my kids to also realize, like, sometimes if you don’t get your way or what you want, you still have to do the right thing. And that’s what we wanted to do.”

Schauffele voiced full-throated confidence in Bradley, who owns a 4-2 Ryder Cup record as a player. Still, he offered one key piece of advice for the first-time captain: focus on the golf.

“I feel like Keegan would understand sort of when we need to get up, when we need to practice, and when you need to do this and hopefully dodge anything you don’t have to do and maybe that will help us,” Schauffele said. “Taking a bunch of photos all dressed up. There’s two or three dinners that we have to go to that are kind of mandatory-ish, and I think if we cut it down to one or two versus three that would be a really big deal.”

The U.S. team lost by 5 1/2 points to the Europeans at Marco Simone Golf Club in Rome last September.  The United States has won three of the last four Ryder Cups on American soil.