Brandel Chamblee Has an Idea for the Next American Ryder Cup Captain. It's Not Tiger.

It’s been reported that Tiger Woods has until the Masters to decide whether he’ll captain Team USA when the Americans head to Adare Manor for the 2027 Ryder Cup. With everything he’s juggling behind the scenes, Tiger wants to be sure he has the bandwidth to do both jobs—captain and chairman of the Future Competition Committee—without cutting corners.

“I haven’t made my decision yet,” Tiger said last month at the Genesis Invitational. “I’m trying to figure out what we’re trying to do with our tour. That’s been driving me hours upon hours every day, trying to figure out if I can actually do our team—Team USA—and everyone involved in the Ryder Cup justice with my time.”

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The PGA of America is waiting on that call, and as of now, it hasn’t dug too deeply into contingency plans.

Brandel Chamblee, on the other hand, already has his guy.

“I think the next captain should be Justin Leonard,” Chamblee told Skratch’s Dan Rapaport on Monday’s episode of Dan on Golf. “Tiger’s got plenty of time to be a captain. He should probably do it more than once. I think he’s too busy with the governance of the PGA TOUR, Charlie being at home, I think he wants to play a little on the PGA TOUR Champions. He’s got bigger fish to fry right now than taking over the Ryder Cup.”

For all you non-ball-knowers out there, Leonard was that guy.

He won the 1992 U.S. Amateur and the NCAA individual title two years later. He racked up 12 PGA TOUR victories, including The Open in 1997 and THE PLAYERS in 1998, and wore the red, white, and blue in 1997, 1999, and 2008.

Then there’s Brookline.

Just before the turn of the millennium, Leonard’s birdie putt on 17 against José María Olazábal all but sealed it for the Americans. To this day, that moment lives on as one of the defining shots in U.S. Ryder Cup history.

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“With Justin, you tell me an American player—because we don’t heroes in the Ryder Cup—that has hit a more memorable shot than Justin Leonard. He’s handled himself with class, is really thoughful. He comes closest in all of those metrics—tangibles and intangibles—to being Paul McGinley, to me.”

Like Leonard, McGinley played in three Ryder Cups. But the Irishman later served as a European vice captain twice (2010, 2012) and captained Europe to victory in 2014 at Gleneagles.

Chamblee’s thinking is simple: when Tiger’s ready, hand him the keys—and let him keep them as long as he wants.

But right now? With all the balls Tiger has in the air, Leonard feels like the cleanest, most sensible choice to lead the Americans into battle in Ireland.