- McIlroy, 35, has filed for divorce from his wife of seven years, Erica Stoll.
- This shocking news was announced just days before the start of the PGA Championship.
Rory McIlroy looked in good spirits on the driving range on Tuesday. It was just after 1 p.m. here in Louisville, and his three entourages were all smiling and laughing as whispers grew louder in the grandstands behind him.
By then, as he well knew, rumors were circulating and still relevant to his decade-long mission to re-establish himself as a title-winning golfer on the sport’s main stages. This may have been a private story that quickly attracted attention.
The latter was about the only story to his name on Monday, when McIlroy was still at home in Florida and most of the circus had arrived in town for the PGA Championship. Will he be able to end the decade-long wait? Is Valhalla, the course where a younger, more fearless version of himself won his fourth and most recent major in 2014, also the place where he stopped the clock and its many questions?
By early Tuesday afternoon, questions arose after it was revealed that McIlroy had filed papers in a Florida court on Monday seeking a divorce from Erica Stoll, his wife of seven years. Among other things, there were concerns about whether he would be able to withstand such a public parade of personal trauma when the stakes in his profession were already so high.
As we will learn in the coming days, this is a form of sports voyeurism, a bizarre case where the lines between what an athlete does and how they live their lives are inevitably blurred. It will become one.
In most sports, this has little ripple effect. But there is a misguided belief that golf is more dignified than other sports, and this has been the biggest topic of discussion this past week, when most of the discussion has centered on the sawdust-white topic of tour mergers. became. By Tuesday evening, it was being discussed around the world.
Whatever its right or wrong, it’s noise, even if other details and allusions creep in over time. Added context. McIlroy will take questions from the media when he meets with him at 1pm on Wednesday, and there will be a discussion in the gallery next to him from Thursday onwards.
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It will be difficult to block it. Even if he couldn’t hear most of the sound, he would know it was there, just as he did on the driving range. That makes a difficult job even more difficult. But here’s the thing about McIlroy. He’s a tougher guy than he looks, and that’s true of anyone who excels in elite sports. For McIlroy, ranked No. 2 in the world, the hardness is often lost beneath his gentleness, but it’s still there.
Of all places, this is the place where he made that very clear 10 years ago. Those steps have been comprehensively retraced over the past week of preparation for this tournament, but one detail that has been somewhat overlooked in the bigger picture of that thrilling victory concerned what happened on the 18th tee.
By then it was dark and it was highly doubtful whether McIlroy and his playing partner Bernd Wiesberger would be able to finish the round. One important detail is the inclusion of Phil Mickelson in the previous pair. He would rank as the second-biggest alpha in the sport in anyone’s eyes. For his part, some may dispute Tiger Woods’ number one spot. That’s the kind of guy he is, he’s the type of guy who always believes he’s the smartest guy in any room or field.
The second detail is that psychology is more important in golf than in most athletic sports. Those few seconds when you’re standing on a ball or walking after a bad ball can consume your whole body if you think too much. So, when Mickelson stood on the par-5 18th tee, where he could score with a two-stroke lead over McIlroy, he realized that if he slowly climbed the last and made a birdie, McIlroy might run out of steam and have to sleep with a one-stroke lead. Already knew.
But McIlroy, then just 25 years old, took the situation in a highly controversial way, with the poise and confidence of a sporting comet.
He asked officials for permission to tee off immediately after Mickelson and Rickie Fowler, and was granted permission in an unprecedented situation. That meant the pair had to hit off the tee and wait next to the fairway for McIlroy to play. That frustrated Mickelson a lot. Because it cost him an advantage to which he was completely entitled. Sir Nick Faldo pointed out in his commentary how unusual that was.
McIlroy and Wisberger were effectively allowed to play the final hole as a group of four. When Mickelson took the birdie, McIlroy won with enough margin to finish with par, his second major in three weeks, and also stormed the British Open. At the time, he talked about the merits of the ugly win, but more recently he commented on the steal being included in the discussion on the tee box.
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Reflecting on the exchange, McIlroy said, “I don’t really like conflict, but when it comes down to it, I do it.”
“That was one of those times where you had to assert your will over a situation. If I hadn’t been so pushy, I don’t think I would have had to sleep all night on that lead and tee shot. But I just didn’t want to do it.
“I think the guys in front of us were pretty frustrated with how everything was going. In the end we got the result we wanted and that’s all that matters.”
That’s hardness. Also, if we were to confuse this with his current situation, it could be cheating in the realm of pseudo-psychology, but this situation, especially since his 3-year-old daughter is at the center of the turmoil. would be far more consequential than any sports scenario. But that episode with Mickelson gave us a glimpse of the dog he’s going to throw into the fight.
During the 2016 Ryder Cup, during a singles match against Patrick Reed at Hazeltine (which McIlroy lost), he cupped his ears and yelled “I can’t hear you” at a hostile crowd; The same thing applies when you refuse to acknowledge something. The American player who became known as Teegate (who won the final round showdown) at the 2023 Dubai Desert Classic. Most visibly, we saw the dog when he had to be removed from Patrick Cantlay’s caddy in the 2023 Ryder Cup parking lot.
That desire for battle was perhaps most obvious and loudest in the LIV skirmishes. First, how he appointed himself as the startup’s chief critic, and then how he stood up to the likes of Woods, Jordan Spieth and Patrick Cantlay and said: The PGA Tour should stop fighting Saudi Arabia’s invasion of its traditional territory and unite. Whether you agree with him or not, he knows how to go against common sense. Over the past two years, he has willingly made himself a lightning rod for criticism in some of the most heated debates in his sport’s history.
What’s so remarkable is that even though his success didn’t translate into major wins, McIlroy played some of the best golf of his career in such a frenzy. be. That he won eight world titles during the political frenzy of the 2022, 2023 and 2024 seasons makes it very clear how his game could rise in tandem with the turmoil around him. It will be highlighted.
These latest headlines, of course, relate to completely different situations. Then again, exploring the connections between his approach to sports dramas and his personal turmoil is the kind of work that could explode into a thousand pieces of nonsense with one miscut. But if there is any contemporary evidence of what he will do this week, it may be found just this past Sunday.
In the estimation of many qualified observers, his second five-stroke victory in two starts at the Wells Fargo Championship most resembled the breakthrough act that once took his sport by storm. . His driving was imperious, his wedges sharp, and he finished off Xander Schauffele just like he did a few years ago.
He wore a wedding ring in Quail Hollow, but it was gone in Tuesday’s Valhalla, but his personal turmoil would have already been in full swing by the time he gave his victory press conference.
In it, he was asked how he was able to take such comprehensive action when his own political skirmishes were still going on (a few days earlier, he had announced plans to return to negotiations with Saudi Arabia). (He acknowledged that Woods, Spieth, and Cantlay exercised their veto power in one of the maneuvers.) He answered: “I’ve always been able to compartmentalize pretty well. For some reason, whenever there’s a lot going on, I seem to play very good golf.”
The disintegration of his marriage and the noise it would cause is in a separate category from all of that. But the comment sparked other thoughts dating back to 2014, when his high-profile relationship with Caroline Wozniacki ended at his instigation in May, and three months later he won two majors. and won the ruck with Mickelson.
Is it completely irrelevant compared to what he’s dealing with now? Quite possible. But it would also be foolish to doubt the firmness it would take for him to finally end a decade-long drought when a thousand whispers grow louder in a matter of days.