Rory McIlroy, speaking candidly while also perhaps deploying a touch of gamesmanship, has repeatedly explained the difficulties of being a Ryder Cup playing-captain.
On Wednesday, McIlroy even revealed he’d been asked about the potential of himself becoming a European playing-captain down the road. He declined. Why?
“Because I don’t think you can do it,” he said.
In six weeks, Keegan Bradley is very likely to try.
Bradley’s stellar play has been the top Ryder Cup storyline of the summer. He was named the U.S. captain for 2025’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in July 2024, but his selection was a unique one. Even now, at age 39, he’s still arguably in the prime of his career.
Bradley playing in the 2025 Ryder Cup seemed like a possibility when he was named to lead the U.S. 13 months ago, but now it’s a near certainty. He has won once this summer, recorded five top 10s and missed just two cuts. He’s up to 12th in the World Ranking.
“I don’t think you’re going to find any or many Americans that are going to argue that he shouldn’t be on the team,” Rickie Fowler said Tuesday.
That’s where the problem lies. There are only two events left before Bradley will have to make his six captain’s picks. He’s currently 10th in the Ryder Cup standings and likely to be playing, not just captaining. McIlroy has already said how difficult that would be to do, and you know what? Bradley might agree with him.
Told about McIlroy’s comments on Wednesday at the BMW Championship, Bradley said, “he might be right.”
“We don’t know,” Bradley continued. “No one knows. 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.”
Asked to elaborate on the difficulties of multi-tasking as a player-captain, McIlroy rattled off things like media commitments, extra meetings with vice captains and the PGA of America, opening ceremony duties, and more.
“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. “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. So I just think for those reasons.
“Then the captain isn’t going to be on the course all day, so really the captain’s only going to be able to play one session on Friday, one session on Saturday. Would you rather not have a player that has the flexibility to go twice if he’s playing well? There’s a lot of different things that go into it. Look, it’s just my opinion, but I think it would just be very difficult to do.”
The last time there was a playing-captain in the Ryder Cup was 1963, when Arnold Palmer pulled double-duty and led the U.S. to a victory.
While Bradley might not disagree with McIlroy’s assessment, he also understands the reality. Essentially, he wants to play in the Ryder Cup, as long as he’s proven to himself (and others) he deserves a spot. (He has.) Now comes planning for that scenario, which Bradley and his five vice captains have certainly done.
“What I’ve done throughout my entire career is really lean on other people for advice and calling people and asking them, How do you prepare for a major? What do you do with the last tee time? How do you deal with the media? How do you deal with corporate obligations?” Bradley said. “In this instance, there’s no one to call. So 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, including Jim Furyk, who’s been on these teams and been captain a bunch of times. Quite frankly, I’ve been leaning on them more than any other captain ever anyways, even if I’m not playing.
“We’re ready for this if it happens,” he continued. “I’m not sure it’s going to. I can truly sit here right now and say I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have to look at myself just like any other player trying to make the team. I’m 10th in points right now, and that’s not 6th.”
In three days, at the conclusion of the BMW Championship, the top six players in the Ryder Cup standings will earn automatic bids onto Team USA. We’ll also know more regarding Bradley’s situation, although at this point it’s hard to imagine he won’t be hitting any shots come late September at Bethpage Black, multi-tasking difficulty be damned.
