When Keegan Bradley posted a picture of his suitcase from the 2012 Ryder Cup, still unopened, along with the promise he'd made to himself to keep it that way until he won one, it was impossible not to feel sorry for him.
Here's someone who desperately wanted to represent his country again, someone who did that with vim and vigour at Medinah and again at Gleneagles. Nine years he's waited for another go, not so much as a Presidents Cup appearance to sustain him along the way and no place at the Olympics in Tokyo.
Then, when the resurgence came, it wasn't quite enough.
In a system of six qualifiers and six wildcards, the 13th man was always going to be hard done by. It is such a shame that it so happens to be the player who perhaps cares most – and the one for whom this might have been a final chance. Yes, the Ryder Cup goes to New York in 2025, but Bradley will be 39. To qualify he'll have to play like he did when he was 25.
But if we're allowed to simplify this for just a second, and if we're to debate the reasons why he was number 13 and not number 12, then first we need to identify just who that man was. And it was not Justin Thomas, who Zach Johnson said you 'don't leave at home', but Sam Burns, who the United States captain very much could have.
For all the outrage that Thomas is 'one of the boys', that his cosy relationship with Johnson and partnerships with Jordan Spieth or Rickie Fowler were decisive, let us not forget about Burns, likely to again pair up with his best friend on the PGA Tour, Scottie Scheffler.
Burns outperformed Thomas in 2023 (albeit their head to head reads only 8-7 in his favour), but that is the one and only measure by which his place is easier to justify than that of a two-time major champion, former world number one, and Ryder Cup star.
Thomas has been there and done it and that counts for something. His Ryder Cup record reads 6-2-1 and when all around him failed to produce in Paris, he beat Rory McIlroy to cap a magnificent debut. But for Francesco Molinari's record display, he might have been the top scorer in the event. It was a talismanic performance of the highest class from someone who looked set to lead this side for years to come.
At Whistling Straits, he wasn't quite so impressive, yet he still lost only one of four matches and returned a winning record. His 4&3 margin of victory in the singles, against one of Europe's stronger players on paper, was not bettered that day. Then there's the Presidents Cup. Thomas's rankings among the US side in three appearances read 2-1-2 and, just as in the Ryder Cup, that '1' came on foreign soil.
That means that in five team appearances across competitions, alongside 55 teammates, a grand total of six of those teammates have outperformed him. So far, never has he let his side down.
This guarantees nothing as far as the future goes, and his play has to remain a concern. But make no mistake: Europe would have liked him to remain at home. When Jon Rahm was presented with the wildcards, his reaction to Thomas was exactly as you'd expect – not one ounce of surprise. If Rory McIlroy is to renew rivalries in a singles match, he would rather face the player he beat in 2012 than the one he lost to in 2018.
And then we come to Burns. Yes, the reigning Match Play champion and, since his 2021 breakthrough, a prolific PGA Tour winner. And yes, a fabulous player, long off the tee, improved with his approaches, capable of high-class putting. Given his overall trajectory since the last Ryder Cup, it makes perfect sense that Burns would feature in this side.
The thing is, despite winning a World Golf Championship event, he finished behind Bradley in the standings and didn't come close to qualifying. In stroke play events he managed three top-10 finishes all season, two of them when defending titles on courses he loves. Once more, he made no impact in majors, with a best of 29th at Augusta.
Most of all, the worry with Burns is how far his game travels. It might seem crude, but at the moment there is a way to summarise his performances: he is world-class close to home, and the further away from it he gets, the worse he becomes. There might be no elite golfer who has been so dependent on the grass, climate and courses he gets in the southern states than he has been to date.
Burns' record overseas at the highest level reads 18-76-66-42-19-MC, all in Britain. Even if we give him a pass for not yet having got to grips with links golf and suggest that Marco Simone might be far more suitable, then what about his record in the United States?
Burns has five top-10s in his last eight starts in Texas, where he's won twice. He has four in his last seven in Florida, where he's won twice. He's also won in Mississippi and has been a fixture in New Orleans, right on his doorstep. He's played well in South Carolina and was sixth in Alabama well before he became a household name. Last week he finished fourth in 72-hole scoring at the TOUR Championship in Georgia.
That's virtually all of his best form. There are three top-10s in California we can count as exceptions and a share of eighth in a limited field in Baltimore, too. But in 21 starts across Ohio, New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois and Michigan, he's yet to crack the top 10, yet to produce the levels we expect of him when he's playing in the south.
When you combine this with his lack of experience it hardly makes for a flawless case and while statistically among the very best players at the Presidents Cup last year, how is it that Burns played in five matches without winning any of them? Why didn't he close the door when 1up in Hideki Matsuyama, instead making a double-bogey at the 15th and then fortunate not to lose on the 18th?
As with Thomas, numbers only tell part of the story, but when we're talking about why Bradley isn't on the plane to Rome, we should consider who really kept him out of this side. First and foremost it was Brian Harman and Wyndham Clark, surprise major champions who qualified when nobody expected them to. But after them it was the 12th man on the list.
That man is Burns, and the case for his inclusion looks weaker to me than the case for Thomas's.
