OWINGS MILLS, Md. (AP) — Rory McIlroy believes the Ryder Cup has become too big of an event for a captain to play in the matches and said Wednesday he already shot down the idea when approached about doing it himself someday.
But he is no less fascinated by the conundrum facing U.S. captain Keegan Bradley.
“I definitely think he’s one of the best 12 American players right now,” McIlroy said Wednesday ahead of the BMW Championship. “That’s why everyone is so interested and it’s such a compelling case. I’m just as interested as everyone else to see how it all plays out.”
That includes Bradley, who is no ordinary Ryder Cup captain.
He is 39, the youngest U.S. captain since Arnold Palmer at age 34 in 1963. He also is the defending champion of the BMW Championship, one of his two PGA Tour titles over the last year that has put him in position to make the team on his own.
He would have to win at Caves Valley to earn one of six automatic spots. Then, he makes six captain’s picks after next week’s Tour Championship.
The Ryder Cup is Sept. 26-28 at Bethpage Black.
“I can truly sit here right now and say I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Bradley said. “I have to look at myself just like any other player trying to make the team.”
The Ryder Cup hasn’t had a playing captain since Palmer at East Lake 62 years ago, when the King was still in his prime (he won the Masters the following year) and matches were not much of a competition against players from only Britain and Ireland.
Bradley is No. 10 in the Ryder Cup standings. He is No. 12 in the world, with only six other Americans ranked ahead of him. He also is No. 14 in the FedEx Cup, with only eight other Americans ahead on that list.
“If I was the captain, I’d pick Keegan. I think he’s played great,” Patrick Cantlay said.
Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world who long ago clinched his spot on another American team, said Bradley could only add to what he considers a strong team.
“If that’s something that Keegan wants to be part of the team and wants to play, I think he’s a guy we’d all love to have on the team,” Scheffler said.
McIlroy played with him for two days in the Travelers Championship — Bradley went on to win that week — and said at the time, “If he doesn’t finish in the top six and he doesn’t pick himself, then you could say America aren’t going with their very best.”
Even so, McIlroy has his doubts.
The Ryder Cup has become the largest spectacle in golf. Bradley is on calls every week for planning and other logistics that are involved. There are media responsibilities daily during the Ryder Cup. There are lineups to consider.
“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, preparing your speech for the opening ceremony,” McIlroy said. “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.
“If you’d have said it 20 years ago, I’d say, yeah, it was probably possible to do,” he said. “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.”
He also suggested Bradley probably would be limited to playing one of the two sessions on Friday and Saturday, which might hurt the U.S. team if Bradley had a hot hand that week.
Tiger Woods was playing captain at the 2019 Presidents Cup — far less intense, and an event the Americans haven’t lost since 1998 — and played only one session a day at Royal Melbourne.
“There’s a lot of different things that go into it, and that’s why I think … look, it’s just my opinion, but I think it would just be very difficult to do.”
Bradley has considered all this, too. He said ultimately he would look at himself the way he does any other potential pick, with advice from his assistant captains and the six players who automatically qualify.
“He might be right,” Bradley said of McIlroy’s opinion. “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.”
Bradley said he has spent a career leaning on people for advice on how to prepare for majors, dealing with the media, fulfilling corporate obligations, all elements of professional golf.
“In this instance, there’s no one to call,” Bradley said. “So nobody knows how this could work.”
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