‘Undivorce’: the chequered love life of golf champion Rory McIlroy
The golfer is back with his wife only a month after he announced he was ending the marriage, saying they have resolved their differences and ‘look forward to a new beginning’.
Until this week all I knew about golf is that it’s played with clubs. Then Rory McIlroy called off his divorce, less than a month after he filed for it. Now I know that the US Open is this week, two men called Schauffele and Scheffler are hotly tipped, and the Divorce That Wasn’t bodes well for McIlroy’s form. McIlroy’s form! Hark at me. It’s been quite the ride, and I’m not the one married to him.
Erica Stoll, on the other hand, is. On May 13 she opened the front door of their pounds 10 million home in Palm Beach, Florida, to be greeted by a bundle of court documents and the news that her husband thought their marriage “irretrievably broken”. “The respondent is not pregnant,” the petition continued, “and no additional issue is contemplated.” How nice it must have been for Stoll to see her womb reduced to a bullet point. McIlroy’s spokesman stressed that “Rory’s desire to ensure this difficult time is as respectful and amicable as possible. He will not be making any further comment.”
Four weeks later McIlroy’s made a further comment: he’s changed his mind, and now they’re undivorced. “Over the past weeks, Erica and I have realised that our best future was as a family together,” he said in a statement remarkable for its lack of joy. “Thankfully, we have resolved our differences and look forward to a new beginning.” This may or may not have implications for the status of Stoll’s womb, and one can only hope that she, and not McIlroy’s lawyer, will be the first to know.
Either way she has endured a month of marital limbo and speculation. Golf is terrible for marriages, it’s been said, although if five irons also had spokesmen, they might reasonably feel aggrieved and argue that the problem isn’t the game but the men.
The couple had been leading separate lives, it is said. He was away on tour for much of the year; she kept the home fires burning in Florida with their three-year-old daughter, Poppy. Rumours swirled of a liaison with a blonde TV presenter, Amanda Balionis, whose own marriage collapsed this year. McIlroy was seen flirting with her on camera, and is said to have spent time with her out of shot, in San Diego. Neither she nor McIlroy denied a romance. One friend described him as “not predictable”, adding: “He just doesn’t know what he wants.” Another told a tabloid: “He’s a nice guy, a good friend and a great golfer, but he’s not a great partner.”
His first partner, Holly Sweeney, was his childhood sweetheart. They were together for six years until she was 21. She later spoke of her devastation when he dumped her unexpectedly and soon started dating the tennis player Caroline Wozniacki. On New Year’s Day 2014 he proposed to her. Five months later he changed his mind. In a three-minute phone call, four days after the invitations had gone out, he told her he didn’t want to get married after all. “There is never a good time to end a relationship,” he said, adding that the decision was “mutual and amicable” but “the problem is all mine”. He was not, he said, ready for “all that marriage entails”, but wished Wozniacki “all the happiness she deserves”.
Stoll met McIlroy in 2012. She was working for the Professional Golfers’ Association arranging transport for players during that year’s Ryder Cup. He overslept, and Stoll was tasked with arranging a police escort to get him to the course on time. Two years later, after the Wozniacki wedding invites had been pulped, she and McIlroy got together.
“Erica that week was always the one that was checking us in and out,” McIlroy recalled, years later, of their first meeting. “She was there at transportation, so she was always in the car park. But yeah, it’s still cool to look around and think about that week, and obviously everything that’s happened since then.”
So 2014 was a busy year for McIlroy. He was engaged to one woman at the beginning of it and dating another whom he would go on to marry at the end. Somewhere in the middle was an ambitious American actress called Meghan Markle. Tom Bower’s book Revenge recounts how McIlroy, then 25, celebrated winning the Open and the PGA Championship by partying “non-stop across Manhattan with his entourage”. The golfer was, he noted, “reported to be chasing brunettes”.
By happy chance one particular brunette from Suits was staying with a friend near his hotel, and McIlroy nominated Markle to do the Ice Bucket Challenge with him. This was a popular viral phenomenon in which one person poured a bucket of ice over another to raise awareness of and money for research into motor neurone disease. Justin Timberlake and Oprah Winfrey were among many celebrities who did it, and McIlroy was duly filmed pouring ice over Markle’s head on her friend’s balcony. According to Bower they retired to his hotel for a drink and the next day, at a tournament, he was “worse for wear following a hectic night”. Markle went back home to her boyfriend in Toronto and took to her blog, The Tig, in her own inimitable style.
“Rory McIlroy. THE Rory McIlroy,” she wrote, “whispered (and shouted) to be the foremost golfer in the world, loved by Tiger, respected by Palmer, and dumper of frigid water on my lone head. That Rory McIlroy. He is a force who has the propensity to actually work hard and play hard – relishing intense practices to substantiate his title, embracing nights of sipping Opus One (his bold and impressive choice of wine) …” and on, and on.
“The most endearing quality of this man is his character,” Markle continued, “as real and honest as they come, appreciating a simple smile, never shunning a fan photo, expressing a love for his parents that is rarely seen in men his age. He is not just the real deal … he is real. And perhaps that is what makes him even more cherished.”
By the end of the year the woman doing the cherishing was Stoll. McIlroy proposed the year after, arranged a prenup that both signed, and they married at a 13th-century castle in Ireland on April 21, 2017. The wedding is reported to have cost pounds 400,000, and Stevie Wonder sang to guests including Ed Sheeran, Chris Martin and Jamie Dornan, who grew up in the same town as McIlroy.
Now 35, and worth an estimated pounds 250 million, McIlroy is reported to have baulked at the prospect of losing half his fortune to his 36-year-old wife and spending less time with his daughter. Friends and advisers apparently suggested that he give the marriage another six months and see how things turn out.
The timing of the reconciliation could be fortuitous for his form: he won the PGA Championship days after ending his relationship with Wozniacki, and reconciled with Stoll on the eve of the US Open. “For whatever reason,” he once said, “I seem to play very good golf whenever I have a lot of stuff going on.” I note that Sky Sports is promising 45 hours of live coverage and “lots of extra tournament programming”. Is that a euphemism? I can hardly wait to find out.
The Times
