For years, Brooks Koepka has been a staple in two places: at the top of the leaderboard at major tournaments and on the USA Ryder Cup team. For the 2025 golf season, neither was the case.
The five-time major champion endured arguably the worst season of his Hall of Fame career this past year, and as a result, it will mark the first time in the last four Ryder Cups that he’s not a part of the Team USA roster. Koepka, though, has made peace with the fact that he wasn’t one of Keegan Bradley’s six captain picks and doesn’t seem to have any ill will.
“Yeah, I mean, I played my way off it, so there’s nobody else (to blame),” he said in an interview with the “Off The Ball” Podcast at the Irish Open. “I can’t be disappointed, I did it myself. It’s not anything I’m not aware of. I’m not shying away from it. It’s just bad timing. You have one down year, but if it’s the year after the Ryder Cup, it makes it a whole lot easier to catch up.”
Brooks Koepka’s Down Season Costs Him Ryder Cup Bid
Koepka has always defined his personal success by his performance in majors. From that standpoint, the 2025 season was one to forget. Koepka missed the cut in three of four majors this season. He was able to muster a 12th-place finish at the U.S. Open, but he was never in contention. The only reasonable comp in the LIV star’s recent history was 2022 when he was dealing with a knee injury. He missed the cut at two majors (the Masters and Open Championship) and mustered a pair of 55th-place finishes at the PGA Championship and U.S. Open.
Certainly, the 35-year-old will look for a similar rebound when the calendar turns to 2026. He rebounded in a major way after that disappointing ’22 season, finishing second at the 2023 Masters before winning the PGA Championship for the third time in his career.
This season also marked the first in which he didn’t secure a win on the LIV tour, either. Koepka has five career wins since making the move from the PGA Tour, but he wasn’t able to collect a trophy in the 2025 season, finishing 33rd on the LIV points list — just ahead of Jinichiro Kozuma and Caleb Surratt.
By playing on LIV, Koepka had fewer chances to gain world ranking points in hopes of an automatic bid, and he didn’t has many opportunities to impress in front of Bradley. As such, he’s on the outside looking in, but he’s not about to blame the LIV dynamic for his absence at Bethpage Black in late September.
“Just the situation I’m in being on LIV and not playing well — I don’t think LIV had anything to do with me not being on the team. It was more of a ‘Hey, the timing of the year’ and just trying to get that ball rolling,” Koepka added.
Of course, the struggles and the injury history will beg the question as to whether Koepka is the latest superstar to ride off into the sunset with a bag of cash from LIV.
“Koekpa is a player who, through sheer force of talent, seems capable of winning any major at any time,” Brendan Quinn wrote for The Athletic in June. “But recent years have come to present a man embarking happily into the throes of first-time fatherhood while seemingly entering a career twilight coming maybe a little faster than it should. The injuries had taken their toll. The move to LIV Golf was well-timed. Koepka seemed to be on a playing trajectory more closely resembling Dustin Johnson than Rory McIlroy, despite Koepka, 35, being a year younger than McIlroy.”
Koepka, who would have been a fan favorite at Bethpage Black, will now try to make the 2027 roster for a road Ryder Cup at Adare Manor in Ireland.
Brooks Koepka Makes Painfully Honest Admission About 2025 Ryder Cup