Rory McIlroy raises doubts about Keegan Bradley’s potential Ryder Cup player-captain

Rory McIlroy doesn’t believe playing in the Ryder Cup and being a team captain is a feasible idea, telling reporters Wednesday that he already turned down the idea when it was brought up to him. 

The interest in the topic stems from the impending decision by Keegan Bradley over whether he’ll select himself as one of the 12 members of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, which would make him the first playing captain since 1963 when golf legend Arnold Palmer did it. 

But the Northern Irish golf star bluntly responded to a reporter’s question about why he turned down the idea, saying, “Because I don’t think you can do it.”

“I just think the commitments that a captain has the week of — you think about the extra media that a captain has to do, you think about the extra meetings that the captains have to do with the vice captains, with the PGA of America, in Keegan’s case, preparing your speech for the opening ceremony — just there’s a lot of things that people don’t see that the captain does the week of the Ryder Cup, especially now that the Ryder Cup has become so big,” McIlroy said, per CBS Sports. 

“If you’d have said it 20 years ago, I’d say, ‘Yeah, it was probably possible to do,’ but how big of a spectacle and everything that’s on the line in a Ryder Cup now, I just think it would be a very difficult position to be in.”

At 39, Bradley is the youngest U.S. captain at the Ryder Cup since Palmer at the age of 34 back in 1963. 

McIlroy agreed that Bradley is one of the 12 best American golfers, and the unique situation is why he’s “just as interested as everyone else to see how it all plays out.”

McIlroy also forewarned that doubling as captain and playing could potentially limit how many sessions he can be out on the course playing. 

Bradley, for his part, acknowledged that McIlroy could very well have a point, but ultimately said no one knows what will happen.

“He might be right,” Bradley said. “We don’t know. No one knows. Yeah, like everybody’s telling me to start the year that a player can’t be captain and have a good year. For me, I feel like this is one of my best years that I’ve ever had. … Nobody knows how this could work. I certainly have a lot of concerns as well as everybody else, but I have the most incredible vice captains.” 

The Ryder Cup is still more than a month away and will be held on Long Island at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale.