Rory McIlroy was Offered Ryder Cup Playing Captain Role for Future, Shot it Down ‘Straightaway’
Rory McIlroy was Offered Ryder Cup Playing Captain Role for Future, Shot it Down ‘Straightaway’ originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
It’s the middle of August with the Ryder Cup just over a month away, and the golf world is getting more and more consumed with how both the U.S. and European Ryder Cup teams are shaping up. Will U.S. captain Keegan Bradley favor youth over experience with his picks? Will he lean toward choosing players who do well in louder environments? The event will be held at Bethpage State Park in New York, and the decibel levels are expected to be in an electrifying range.
What will Luke Donald look for in his captain’s picks for Europe? At tenth in the U.S. Rankings, will Keegan Bradley pick himself as one of his six picks to join his six automatic qualifiers the week after the Tour Championship?
Speaking at a press conference ahead of this week’s BMW Championship in Baltimore, Rory McIlroy said that, being a playing captain in this day and age with all the responsibilities that come with, it would be too much to take on, even for himself. The 35-year-old has played in seven total Ryder Cups as a player.
“The idea of me being a playing captain sometime soon coming up has come up, and I’ve shot it down straight away,” McIroy said. “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.”
In McIlroy’s view, this worldwide event has grown enough even in the last two decades to make being a playing captain in the early 2000s doable, but now not a realistic option.
“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,” McIlroy said.
The 45th Ryder Cup will be staged September 23-28.
Related: Rickie Fowler Makes Honest Admission About Keegan Bradley Ahead of Ryder Cup
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Aug 14, 2025, where it first appeared.
