"What did I do that’s getting me fired?"- What Keegan Bradley's caddie thought before finding out about his Ryder Cup captaincy
Keegan Bradley was named captain of the US team for the 2025 Ryder Cup in June, although the news was not made public until two weeks later in July. One of those who witnessed the process first hand was his caddie, Scott Vail.
The veteran bagman recently appeared as a guest on the popular golf podcast Subpar, hosted by Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. Among many other topics, Vail revealed details of the first moments he heard of Bradley's appointment.
This was part of what Vail had to say (via Golf.com):
"The Monday morning [after the Travelers Championship], I got up at 7 a.m. and I had a text already from him...It was weird to have it, you know, straight away the next morning. The text said, 'call me, I need to speak to you.' And I’m like, 'oh, what did I do? What did I do last week that’s getting me fired today?'"
He added:
"So I pick up the phone immediately. Call him. I’m like, 'hey, is everything alright?' And he’s like, 'you’re not gonna believe this'. And he tells me that they want him as the Ryder Cup captain."
Vail said he shed a few tears on hearing the news because he knows "how much" the Ryder Cup means to Keegan Bradley:
"I was shocked at first, and then I was like, emotional. I was almost crying because I know how much it means to him, how much not being on the team last year meant to him. It was just like this whirlwind of emotions and I’m sitting there kind of like, I’m pretty sure I was crying a little bit."
Bradley was among the favorites to be selected by then captain Zach Johnson for the 2023 Ryder Cup, but it was not to be. Less than a year later, Bradley himself was selected to lead the team that will compete at Bethpage Black in 2025.
How long have Scott Vail and Keegan Bradley worked together?
Scott Vail and Keegan Bradley have had a professional relationship that now spans more than seven seasons. Vail took over Bradley's bag in 2017, and the player himself has acknowledged how important the veteran caddie has been in the resurgence of his career.
Vail is the son of Eric Vail, a former Canadian professional hockey player who played 10 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL). However, Scott became involved in golf at an early age and has never strayed from the sport.
His career as a caddie began in the early 2000s when he started working with Derek Gillespie, a professional golfer then playing on the PGA Tour Canada and the Nationwide Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour).
Vail worked with Gillespie until 2005. That year, he began working with Brandt Snedeker, beginning a successful professional path that spanned 12 seasons and included 8 PGA Tour victories.
In 2017, Vail and Snedeker parted ways, and after a brief foray with Henrik Stenson, he began his current stint with Keegan Bradley.
The captain of the US team for the 2025 Ryder Cup had been out of the PGA Tour winner's circle since 2012. With Vail looking after his bag, Bradley has won four tournaments: the 2018 BMW Championship, the 2022 ZOZO Championship, the 2023 Travelers Championship, and the 2024 BMW Championship.