Rory McIlroy insists that the job of being both a captain and a player at the Ryder Cup is not possible in the modern era.
The five-time Major champion was posed the question of the player-captain role ahead of this week's BMW Championship, where he made it clear that he thinks Keegan Bradley would have far too much on his plate if he tries to do both at Bethpage Black next month.
Bradley is in a tricky position, as one of the best 12 US players according to both the Official World Golf Ranking and Data Golf, over whether to pick himself for the side if he does not automatically qualify.
He currently ranks 12th in the OWGR and could feasibly qualify for his own team outright with a win over the next two weeks in the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
If he does make the team, he may well have to hand the reins over to his vice-captains according to what Rory McIlroy said on Wednesday, who also revealed that he was quick to shoot down any talk of him one day being a playing captain.
"No, I've been asked to do that, and I've turned it down," he said on the idea of himself taking the role of player-captain.
"The idea of me being a playing captain sometime soon coming up has come up, and I've shot it down straight away. 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.
"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, and that's why I think - look, it's just my opinion, but I think it would just be very difficult to do."
While his opinion is a very clear one, he admits he is excited to see whether Bradley does make the team or go on to pick himself.
"I definitely think he's one of the best 12 American players right now," McIlroy said.
"That's why everyone is so interested and it's such a compelling case, and it's going to be - I'm just as interested as everyone else to see how it all plays out."
McIlroy is not the only one to back Keegan Bradley as a potential player for Team USA next month, with both Rickie Fowler and Patrick Cantlay praising the 2011 PGA Champion's game.
"If I was the captain, I'd pick Keegan. I think he's played great," Cantlay said.
"I think he has a lot of responsibility that week, so if he feels that he can play golf like a normal week given all his other responsibilities, I'm just saying that if I was the captain and I was thinking, I think he's definitely one of the best American players, and his results have shown that."
"Yeah, I would pick him too. I think it would be hard to find really any or many Americans that would argue that point," Fowler said.
"We'll see. I know he's maybe getting to the area of the 10, 11 number on points of where he may think, like, 'is this a spot where I should not pick myself?'
"I feel like a lot of times there's really only one or two that maybe fluctuate based off of people that were maybe inside the top 12 on points that maybe don't get picked.
"Like I said, 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."
