Best to introduce this story as being about three men and the concept of being a captain.

Start with the young man who is currently serving with that title – Keegan Bradley, just 39, and charging forth as leader of the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

Next, a man whose beautiful life came to a shocking end far too young, though truth be told, Richard “Ricky” Bradley, Keegan’s late uncle, had squeezed much education early and even more heroism later during two tours of Vietnam as a jetfighter pilot and 26 glorious years with the U.S. Navy where he rose to the rank of Captain.

Finally, a third man of immense character, Larry Nelson, who shares much in common with both Bradleys – Keegan, the golfer; Ricky the soldier – except sorrowfully he was never blessed to be called a captain, though anyone who has spent five seconds in his presence knows that title should have been bestowed upon him.

Two Bradleys, one Nelson, and a story of how their roots intersect at both big-stage golf victories and service to our country in the most harrowing of wars, Vietnam.

Fittingly, since today, Sept. 10, is his 78th birthday, we’ll begin with the most humble of our major champions, Larry Nelson.

There is much to put your arms around when it comes to Nelson, be it the 10 PGA Tour wins or the U.S. Open trophy (1983) that sits between those Wanamakers earned by winning the PGA Championship (1981, 1987). But much focus circles around two contrasting Ryder Cup angles – Nelson was 9-0 in the 1979 and 1981 matches, including 4-0 in games against Seve Ballesteros; yet despite three Ryder Cups appearances and three majors – a seemingly cinich of a quiniela – he never got the call to be a captain.

“I never got into a conversation,” said Nelson. “(PGA of America) officers talked to me and offered encouragement and past captains seemed to want me . . . but it never happened. I have no clue.”

No layer of conversation on that topic can leave you anything but sad, given Nelson’s resume and his success in the Ryder Cup (9-3-1, on two winning teams).

Yet let’s return to Nelson the drafted 20-year-old who after 18 months of basic training found himself in the jungles of Vietnam, an infantryman. In accounts told to esteemed journalists for Golf Digest, Dave Kindred and Guy Yocum, Nelson said walking the point (i.e. being the first man to contact the enemy) was the safest job. “No sale to Yocum or to me,” wrote Kindred, who called Nelson “the greatest golfer no one knows.”

At the ’83 U.S. Open when Ballesteros was breathing down Nelson’s neck, it was suggested by one scribe that the Spaniard was intimidating. Yocum cringed. “(Nelson) walked through the Viet Cong. He’s going to be afraid of Seve?”

Were he here today, Captain Ricky Bradley (and he is called “Ricky” here because that is what World Golf Hall of Fame member Pat Bradley always called her oldest brother, whose presence she misses terribly 26 years later) would likely share the warmest of embraces with Nelson.

Back in the ‘60s, kids in their 20s weren’t waking up saying, “Man, I’d love to get into a war on the other side of the world.” Good grief.

“But bad people do bad things,” said Nelson. “Good people do good things. But sometimes good people get caught in the middle because of bad people.”

Ricky Bradley’s trajectory was impeccable. Standout student and football player at Westford (Mass.) Academy. Standout student and wrestler at Boston College. Master’s degree. Commissioned through the U.S. Navy’s Officer Candidate School. There were options available to him, multiple ones, profitable ones, “but he loved the Navy,” said Pat Bradley. “His beloved Navy.”

Stationed aboard the USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy, Captain Bradley flew a F-8J, till his tour was up. “But he wanted another tour,” said Mark Bradley, Keegan’s father and No. 5 in a line of seven Bradley children. “So he rode his bike around for 30 days then did another tour.”

Aboard the USS Coral Sea, Captain Bradley went back into the cockpits of F-14s and F-4 Phantom Jets and oh, how the honors piled up – 13 Strike Flight Air Medals, the Navy Unit Commendation, National Defense Service Medal, the Navy Expeditionary Medal.

“He went for his country. He went for you and I,” said Pat Bradley. “Larry, too. He went for us. They are heroes.”

In Martin Davis' wonderful coffee-table book "The Ryder Cup: Golf's Grandest Event," Larry Nelson's memories of Seve Ballesteros are recounted, along with his stellar 4-0 mark against the Spaniard in 1979.

Blessed to have returned from Vietnam alive, these soldiers went in different directions.

Larry Nelson did the unthinkable – he swung a golf club for the first time at age 21, got hooked, read “Five Lessons,” Ben Hogan’s iconic book, and six years later made the PGA Tour.

Ricky Bradley stayed in the Navy, taught at the “Top Gun” school and the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. After 26 years, Captain Bradley retired from the Navy but heartache struck soon thereafter in 1999. “He was diagnosed with colon cancer,” said Mark Bradley. “Within eight months he died (at 53). Absolutely crushed us.”

“We all adored him,” said Pat Bradley.

The wildly contrasting lives of these two great soldiers from the Vietnam War era are introduced not because they were friends (they were not) or because they became enamored with golf (only Nelson did). It is introduced because U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradly is personally connected to both heroes.

“Keegan is very nostalgic,” said Pat Bradley, who won five LPGA tournaments, including three majors the year her nephew was born (1986). “He knows the history of the game and he’s always had role models, including his Uncle Ricky. Keegan (who was 12 when Captain Ricky Bradley died) knows what a hero his uncle was.”

But Keegan Bradley’s respect stretches far beyond family borders.

“We saw each other at the PGA (Championship) Champions’ Dinner (in May, at Quail Hollow),” said Nelson. “I never really knew him, though we had met in 2011 (the week when Bradley won the PGA Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club not far from where Nelson lives).

“But at Quail Hollow, he came up to me and said he knew about my service in Vietnam. I got the sense that my military past was on his radar.”

Not that Nelson ever envisioned Keegan Bradley correcting a long-standing oversight by offering an invitation to join the Team USA locker room at Bethpage Black for the Ryder Cup (Sept. 26-28). No, Nelson will not be a vice-captain, but he will be there, his presence will be felt as an “ambassador” and one of the most gracious men who has walked the PGA Tour stage is deeply touched.

“I don’t know, if anything, I have to do,” Nelson said with a soft chuckle. “No instructions, yet. But I live by what my mother told me when I was a boy – don’t speak till you’re spoken to.”

It would be a bit disingenuous to suggest that in Nelson Bradley is also paying homage to his Uncle Ricky.

But there’s little doubt that Keegan Bradley is profoundly proud of his uncle’s heroism (Captain Ricky’s daughter Shannon will be the guest of Captain Keegan at Bethpage) and as someone who has felt the pain of being overlooked at the Ryder Cup, you could be safe in suggesting Keegan Bradley is rewarding Larry Nelson with something that should have come long ago. A presence in the team room at a Ryder Cup.

No, it doesn’t come with Captain’s stripes. But knowing Keegan Bradley, it doesn’t matter. He knows Larry Nelson and Captain Ricky Bradley still outrank him.