Rory McIlroy cannot envision Ian Poulter becoming a future Ryder Cup captain, saying the LIV rebel has lost touch with Europe’s younger players.

Poulter, whose ascension to the role once seemed inevitable, admitted this week that he still nurtures hopes of leading Europe when the dust settles on golf’s civil war.

But McIlroy has questioned the realism of those dreams by pointing to Poulter’s absence from the mainstream tours since defecting in 2022, the upshot being that he has become a stranger to the golfers coming through the ranks.

‘It’s hard because we don’t really see them any more,’ said McIlroy ahead of the BMW PGA Championship, which starts at Wentworth on Thursday.

‘You look at what Luke (Donald, the current captain) has done the last few years, he’s really made an effort to come over. He played in the Czech Republic. He was in Switzerland. He’s making an effort to be around the players and make the players feel comfortable with him.

‘With the guys that left, Poulter, (Lee) Westwood, how can these young up-and-comers build a rapport with them when they are never here?

‘That’s a really important part of a Ryder Cup and a Ryder Cup captaincy. I’m not saying that Poulter doesn’t have the credentials, I just think with the current state of where everything is, you need someone that’s around and showing their face as much as they can.

‘Right now, that can’t be them because they are elsewhere.’

Poulter, a seven-time Ryder Cup veteran, is pinning his hopes on golf’s merger negotiations creating a pathway back to the biennial event, having resigned his membership from the DP World Tour at the height of the furore last year. The Tour confirmed yesterday that under their existing rules he is ineligible to captain the team, so his prospects rest on those talks creating a provision for those who gave up their membership when they joined LIV.

Asked if he would one day be willing to play in the Cup under a LIV rebel, McIlroy, who is battling a virus, said: ‘It’s such a grey area.

‘There’s some I would be OK with and others I wouldn’t be OK with. Sorry to put them all in the same bucket.’