2014 Ryder Cup team: Tom Watson picks Keegan Bradley, Hunter Mahan and Webb Simpson for USA roster

American Ryder Cup captain Tom Watson has filled out his roster for Gleneagles this month, choosing Keegan Bradley, Hunter Mahan and Webb Simpson as captain’s picks. The picks were announced in a ceremony from Saturday Night Live studio 8H in New York on Tuesday night.

The average age for recent American captains is 47 years old, so the 65-year-old Watson was a bit of an unorthodox choice to repeat as captain. But it’s been 21 years since the U.S. won on European soil, a 1993 team that was captained by five-time British Open winner and Scottish favorite Watson.

With his Hall-of-Fame resume and career record overseas, we didn’t really know what to expect from Watson. He probably wasn’t going to be persuaded or have his hand forced by anyone outside of his assistant captains. The most difficult question, and one that threatened to suck all the oxygen out of his captaincy, was resolved last month when an injured Tiger Woods took his name out of the running. Tiger’s announcement to back out, and Jason Dufner’s injury eliminated a couple options for Watson, while Dustin Johnson’s “leave of absence” opened up another auto-qualifying spot.

In the end, Watson went with some pretty chalky picks to fill out a team that’s at least looking better than the injured and mostly winless roster from a month ago. They’ll still be underdogs in Scotland, but the situation doesn’t seem as dire and these captain’s picks should add some value.

The two crushed their European opponents in all three matches they played together, and followed that up with some more success last fall in the Presidents Cup. Bradley finished 13th in the Ryder Cup points race (the top nine auto-qualify), so he wasn’t exactly a longshot, but he hasn’t won on the PGA Tour in more than two years. There have been several close calls, however, and he remains one of the top young American players in the world.

Bradley has also obsessed over getting a spot, choosing to play a practice loop with captain Watson up at Gleneagles when the two were over in Europe for The Open. He’s aggressively lobbied for a spot, and became a natural fit and a lock over the past few weeks. He said he got emotional when he got the call from Watson, and his suitcase full of dirty uniform clothes from the 2012 loss remains sealed and in his room at home as motivation. It will be fun to watch his anchored putter paired again with the lefty Mickelson, and this time in front of the away crowd.

Mahan came from deep down the points list and made a big surge over the last few weeks to emerge as a likely candidate. He spent most of the season around 25th or worse in the points standings. Mahan is 32 years old but he’s a bit of a veteran at this point, consistently competing at the biggest events on the PGA Tour for about a decade now. This will be his third Ryder Cup, and his omission from the roster in 2012 was something that Watson specifically cited last year when he was named captain. When questioned whether he would cut the captain’s choices down from four to three, Watson said he would take a look at the process because he was incredulous that a talent like Mahan, who just missed auto-qualifying, was not on the team at Medinah.

So there was that background where Watson had shown an affinity for Mahan’s game and his work in match play. That combined with Mahan’s late push -- a win at The Barclays to open the FedEx Cup, a T7 at the PGA Championship, and a T15 at the WGC-Bridgestone -- made him an appealing option in a pretty unappealing set of options. The 2012 omission was largely due to Mahan flaming out over the second half of the summer, but this year’s been the exact opposite as it looked like he didn’t haven much of a chance just a few weeks ago.

In addition to playing a key role in the 2008 Ryder Cup win at Valhalla, Mahan has probably been the top performing American in the WGC Match Play event each February. That’s the only time these tour pros play that format all PGA Tour season, and Mahan has a championship, runner-up and two Round of 16 results in the last four years. But Mahan is also remembered for that ignominious finish at the 2010 Ryder Cup, where he flubbed a chip shot and lost the clinching point to Graeme McDowell at Celtic Manor in Wales. His teary press conference, and rescue at the dais by Mickelson, was one of the tougher but more memorable American Ryder Cup moments in recent history.

Much like the European side this morning, the most intrigue and debate surrounded the third and final captain’s pick. McGinley had a stable of world-class players, who might not be in their top form right now, but have a long history of Ryder Cup success. In that toss-up, McGinley decided to go with Lee Westwood over Luke Donald.

While McGinley could have picked from about five worthy candidates to fill out his loaded team, Watson’s dilemma for the final spot was difficult because he had a lot of suspect options, each with their own weak argument. The third pick debate centered mostly around Simpson, Brandt Snedeker, unknown Brendon Todd, and Monday’s winner in Boston, Chris Kirk.

Watson said the third pick came to him this morning, and he “kind of had a revelation” on Tuesday as he sifted through the data and names in front of him. Watson said he was swayed by Simpson’s success in the 2012 Cup at Medinah, where he paired with Bubba Watson and held up well in the two-man games against Europe. Bubba isn’t a natural partner for most of the U.S. roster, but Webb is someone that the captain can put with him and not worry too much about Bubba’s surliness disrupting their chemistry.

All three players were in Denver preparing for the BMW Championship and did remote interviews for the show on Golf Channel. Keegan Bradley then ensured they got together for a selfie right after the big announcement.

And with that, we’re all set for Gleneages. The Ryder Cup starts on Friday, Sept. 26. Here are the final rosters for each side: