RORY, TIGER AND KEEGAN BRADLEY: WHERE IS GOLF AND WHERE IS SCHEFFLER?

The Open begins at Royal Troon without a clue of McIlroy’s psyche after his U.S. Open collapse, why Woods gave his Ryder Cup captaincy to Bradley, and why Scheffler can’t win a major after his jailing

     The delicate game of golf has reached the freakish point where Tiger Woods, who should have retired two years ago in Colin Montgomerie’s mind, tried to contact Rory McIlroy after his U.S. Open breakdown. This came as Woods was blowing off a chance to captain our Ryder Cup team and relinquished the role to Keegan Bradley, who played in the event only twice and has no experience as an assistant.

     What else was happening in the world? Oh, McIlroy turned off his phone.

     “Full disclosure, I changed my number two days after the U.S. Open, so I didn't get it until he told me about it today,” he said Tuesday. “I was like, ‘Oh, thanks very much.’ So, I blanked Tiger Woods, which is probably not a good thing.”

     He also lost Michael Jordan and Rafael Nadal. “I know this is a difficult moment. We've all been there as champions. We all lose,” Woods said. “Unfortunately, it just happened, and the raw emotion of it, it's still there, and it's going to be there for, I'm sure, some time. I've missed plenty of shots. Just like Jordan, when they said how many shots have you taken? You see all the game-winning shots, but also, he's missed a ton of game-winning shots, too.”

     What we’d like to know involves why Tiger is blanking out himself — he can’t captain the U.S. team because he’s bogged down in endless talks between PGA Tour Enterprises and LIV Golf — but why Bradley is the prime choice. Even McIlroy had a strong opinion, despite his self-woe, saying, “Disbelief. Definitely, I think a surprise for everyone. I think Keegan is probably in disbelief, at some point. It’s certainly a departure from what the U.S. has done over the last few years.” Why oh why are we settling for disbelief in our international collision with Team Europe? Is it also why the PGA Tour tries to cut deals with LIV chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as Major League Baseball owners feed billions into the bizarre tussle?

     “I don’t think I’ll ever be more surprised of anything in my entire life,” said Bradley, who is 38 and was snubbed from the 2023 team. “I had no idea. It took awhile for it to sink in. I wasn’t fully comfortable with some of the people passed over. I have a lot of respect for the people that came before me and people that deserve to be in this position, so that was a heavy thought and moment.”

     So he called Woods, who did pick up the phone, unlike McIlroy. “Before I accepted this job, I needed to talk to Tiger and I wanted to make sure — I wanted to hear from him,” Bradley said. “We had a great conversation. I certainly need his input.”

     What we have in American golf is Scottie Scheffler, who hasn’t been the same in a major since he was jailed in Louisville, and Bryson DeChambeau, who says his former coach tried to extort $2 million from him after he beat McIlroy at Pinehurst. If both are playing well — and as long as Bradley isn’t “worried about the LIV stuff” and will use DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka — at least the U.S. has a chance to overcome a Rome nightmare in 2025 at Bethpage Black.

     If not? We’ll wonder how a captain can have a last name as a first name and a first name as a last name.

     “Well, the decision was very difficult for me to make. My time has been so loaded with the tour and everything and what we're trying to accomplish,” said Woods, who is deeply involved in talks as a vice chairman of the PGA board. “I'm on so many different subcommittees that it just takes so much time in the day, and I'm always on calls. 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.”

     He likes Bradley. “I think Keegan is going to be a great leader,” Woods said. “He's very passionate about what he does. He's very passionate about the event. I think that this is going to be probably a turnover year for us for the captaincies, 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.”

     Woods is returning for another bleak shot at making a majors cut. He’ll participate in The Open at Royal Troon Golf Club, where Scottish veteran Montgomerie says he’ll have a hard time watching. “Aren't we there? I'd have thought we were past there,” he said. “There is a time for all sportsmen to say goodbye, but it's very difficult to tell Tiger it's time to go. Obviously, he still feels he can win. We are more realistic.” Woods can show up in the United Kingdom until 60, as a three-time winner of the Claret Jug.

     “I’m exempt. Colin’s not. He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt,” he said. “So he doesn’t get the opportunity to make that decision. I do.”

     It would be nice if something sensible happened. How about Scheffler winning his second major this year, reminding us that he’s the best player since the Tiger Beast?

     Or will McIlroy end his horror show, starting in 2014? “A great day until it wasn’t,” he said of Sunday at the U.S. Open. “The few days after it were pretty tough at times, but I feel like I've done a good job of thinking about it rationally and constructively and taking what I need from it and trying to learn from it. But like for the most part it was a great day. I think as you achieve more in the game, you can soften the blow, if you look at everything I've been able to accomplish. It's been a while since I've won a major. It hurt, but I felt worse after some other losses. I felt worse after Augusta in '11, and I felt worse after St Andrews (in 2022). It was up there with the tough losses but not the toughest. When I look back on that day, just like I look back on some of my toughest moments in my career, I'll learn a lot from it.

     “Hopefully, I’ll put that to good use. It's something that's been a bit of a theme throughout my career.”

     The theme is to unlock the phone. And answer it. Tiger Woods is way too busy to be calling another putting washout.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.