Even the most resilient golfers have their ghosts, and for Keegan Bradley, the Ryder Cup is a haunted house he can't seem to escape. Nearly eight months after the United States' devastating loss at Bethpage, the pain still lingers. "I'm starting to feel better," Bradley admitted on Monday at Aronimink, ahead of the PGA Championship. "The last couple months, I've started to feel more like myself." But for a Ryder Cup captain, healing is a slow, winding road.

The memory hits him at the strangest times—a sudden flash of a pairing decision, a course setup that didn't work, a word left unsaid to his players. It's a diabolical kind of punishment for any losing captain, and for Bradley, it's been a long winter of reflection. "Sometimes I'm a little too honest with how I'm feeling," he confessed. "It gets me in some weird spots."

The loss itself was a gut-punch of epic proportions. The favored American team, playing on home soil, was blown out on Friday and Saturday before rallying on Sunday to make the final score a semi-respectable 15-13. But the damage was done. Add in the notoriously rowdy Bethpage crowd, and it all landed squarely on Bradley's shoulders. He spent months trying to atone for every mistake, real or imagined.

For Bradley, the Ryder Cup has become something of a Greek tragedy. The pain runs deep: the collapse at Medinah in 2012, the blowout at Gleneagles in 2014, the agony of being left off the 2023 team in full Netflix view. And now, Bethpage. It's a cycle of heartbreak that seems to follow him. "Ryder Cup's just so brutal to me over the years in every way," he said. "In every single way it's been brutal."

Don't expect him to chase a spot on the 2027 team, either. "I have a tough time focusing in on something like that because of how tough it's been," he admitted. For now, Bradley is focused on the present—and on slowly, quietly, finding his way back to the game he loves.