After Keegan Bradley closed out the winning point in the Presidents Cup with his sigh-of-relief 1-up victory over Si Woo Kim at Royal Montreal, he hopped in a cart with captain Jim Furyk for what one might describe as an exit interview. The two men talked for 10 minutes. It was the only time during the week that Bradley, selected to be a captain’s assistant before Furyk recruited him as a competitor, gained insight into a job he will now undertake as the U.S. Ryder Cup captain.

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“I sort of walked him through the process of how we got from point A to point B and just some of what we were thinking throughout the week,” Furyk told Golf Digest by phone. “He had some great questions. But he had his year-out press conference today? Yeah, he hasn’t had much time for things to slow down. It gets real now.”

Indeed, Bradley and European captain Luke Donald conducted a press conference Tuesday in New York to officially kick off the one-year (or so) countdown to the 45th Ryder Cup slated for September 26-28, 2025, at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y. After Bradley helped the American team to its 10th straight win over the International team in the Presidents Cup, he is now on the hot seat as the leader of a U.S. team that was beaten handily by the Donald-led European squad in Rome.

Bradley, 38, is likely to seek guidance from Furyk and other U.S. captains—and also, he said Tuesday, from Tiger Woods—after getting the call in July to lead the American team despite having no previous experience in the role.

Keegan Bradley hugs captain Jim Furyk after the U.S. win in Presidents Cup in Montreal.

Ben Jared

In the aftermath of the U.S. win in Montreal, Bradley was asked about what, if anything, he might have gleaned from the week that might be useful to him at Bethpage. He talked in broad strokes, citing how Furyk, who was on the losing end as Ryder Cup captain in 2018, handled the team room, going so far as to say it was the greatest team room he’d experienced in two appearances each in the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup. “We’re going to copy a lot of what Jim Furyk did this week,” he said. “He set a culture here for us, and we’re going to carry that over into Bethpage.”

It’s a culture that has been promoted since the 2014 Ryder Cup Task Force and implemented in 2016 at Hazeltine, which, as Furyk explains it, is simply, “to put the players in the best possible position to play their best.”

On Tuesday, Bradley spoke of another aspect of the Furyk formula that impressed him.

“I think what Jim did great was we got off to that incredible start, and the second session, we got beat 0-5, which was pretty shocking. He just stuck with the plan. He didn’t panic. Didn’t change the pairings. He kept everything very level,” Bradley said. “I think that was a time in the tournament where he could have panicked a bit and decided to switch the plan up. It was very clear that he was going to stick with the script and go with what they had figured out before the week started, and I think a lot of the players responded well to that.”

Despite his inexperience, one inherent advantage that Bradley enjoys is playing on home soil; the host team has won by no fewer than five points in each of the last five Ryder Cup matches. The last road win came in 2012 when Europe rallied from a four-point deficit at Medinah Country Club near Chicago.

Having Brandt Snedeker as one of his vice captains will ultimately be a plus. Furyk tapped Snedeker to replace Bradley as an assistant captain in Montreal, an intelligent choice given that Snedeker and Webb Simpson already had been named to Bradley’s leadership team.

“Sneds did a fantastic job and was phenomenal with the players, and having him in that room, he’ll be able to come in and he’ll be able to tell Keegan what it looked like behind the scenes for us as captains, and I think that will be a big help,” Furyk said.

As for Furyk being in New York next fall, Bradley was coy. Having been through the process twice at the top of the roster and been so glowingly praised by Bradley in Montreal, Furyk being retained as a vice captain seems like a decent bet. Woods might have a role, too.

“So I speak to Tiger a bunch when the announcement happened. He was really, really helpful. Had a lot of great advice, Bradley said. “The stress of playing in the Presidents Cup and then the playoffs and everything that came with that, I sort of put everything on pause for a second, and I’ll be addressing that in the coming weeks and months. But I’ve had great conversations with Tiger. He’s a mentor of all of us, and you know, he’s got a lot of great suggestions on things we can do as a team.”

Furyk has some further thoughts, too, and he and Bradley plan to talk frequently in the coming months.

“I let Keegan know I was here for him, and we agreed that we should get together to review some different things,” Furyk said. “He was an assistant captain for a while, but once we started getting into the event and pairings, he wasn’t involved in that. He needed to be a player only. I told him I would do whatever I could to help him out.”

Furyk is right. It gets real now.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com