Rory's Glory (16 page)

The first prize of A$225,000 (€155,000) did not matter. The ghosts of previous darkness had been exorcised and all round the green you could almost hear his actual sighs of relief. But in that moment, his sportsmanship shone through.

In an act of real human virtue and character, remarked upon by many observers and again compared to other golfers of much less humility, he expressed a heartfelt sorry for his vanquished opponent. He sympathized with Adam Scott for gate-crashing his big day.

Not before he firstly apologized to large numbers of the 20,000 crowd milling around the presentation party on the 18
^th
afterwards. And of course being in Australia he was quick thinking in knowing that he also had to be politically correct.

He lamented:

It's hard not to feel some sort of guilt the way I won it. Adam is a phenomenal golfer, a great competitor and probably an even better guy. I feel a bit sorry that I was the one that ruined the Triple Crown for him but I'm happy and Adam should be proud of himself. He's a credit to the game and to this country.

As regards his own goals and ambitions, he was obviously thrilled to win again. It was his first title in just over a year and it staved off his slide down the world rankings. After the win he was back up to world number six. His relief was palpable as he beamed:

It's been a frustrating year but I've worked hard and it's been a process trying to get back to winning golf tournaments again. So it's really nice to do that today.

Then, with the long gleaming silver trophy (similar to the Claret Jug) packed away, it was off to catch a flight from Sydney to California for his last unofficial event of the year: the Tiger Woods-promoted World Challenge.

With Christmas just a few weeks away, on the flight he was no doubt dreaming and making plans ahead. He was thinking of specific plans for a very special person who was the first to receive his phone call and his news of victory.

That person was Caroline Wozniacki.

T
he vast majority of people, including the media, do not know for sure the precise point at which the lives of Caroline Wozniacki and Rory McIlroy first crashed headlong into each other.

Only Caroline, Rory, their closest friends and family know for sure; even then, some of those may be a little hazy about precise details. For there are all sorts of differing stories bandied about.

I do not pretend to know either – and it is none of my business. I would prefer to talk about golf. But relationships have had a big impact on Rory's golf career so it is very much part of his story.

What seems pretty sure, to my mind, is that somebody in the upper echelons of the golf or tennis world brought the two together. If that is true then Rafael Nadal, the current men's world number one tennis player, could have been the matchmaker!

A little while after Rory split from his first girlfriend Holly Sweeney, he met up with his good friend Rafa. He was also introduced to Andy Murray at Wimbledon, so he was getting ‘introduced' to the inner sanctum of the tennis circuit in a big way.

McIlroy was even invited to take his place seated in the Royal box and, short of having a fist full of popcorn with a beer, or strawberries with cream, he really loved watching the top tennis matches from there.

He was steadily becoming an avid follower of the game and of Nadal in particular. There is little doubt that he was also invited by the Spaniard to watch him practise on some of the outside courts – and perhaps for a short lesson or two in serve and volleying.

Therefore the course plotted for Rory to meet ‘Caro' was probably charted by Nadal. Both he and Rory were communicating quite a bit by mobile phone. During one of these exchanges, Rafa apparently passed on Caroline's phone number to Rory, or his to her.

Tabloid sensationalism and salaciousness decreed in one story that Nadal had Caroline Wozniacki's phone number because she liked him. It went on to say that Nadal was only interested in being totally focussed on tennis and besides, he already had a girlfriend.

So the story goes that, knowing Caroline was single, and Rory had recently become single again, he put the two of them in touch. Of all the stories, it does seem as if there is credence in the Nadal involvement somewhere along the line.

Rory and Caroline met shortly after Wimbledon. The two were spotted over at the World Heavyweight title fight in Germany between Vladimir Klitschko and David Haye on 2 July 2011.

Wozniacki, who is an avid fan of worldwide sport and is a Liverpool supporter, tweeted after the bout in Hamburg's Imtech Arena: ‘Fantastic fight! Also met Rory McIlory who was sitting just behind me. Really down to earth great guy.'

The fact that Rory sat behind Caroline was probably a ploy. Both were getting to know one another (‘getting fixed up' in Irish parlance) and they did not want to feed the tabloids with any stories.

A week after attending the big fight night in London, Caroline celebrated her 21
^st
Birthday. On that day, 11 July, Rory tweeted: ‘Happy birthday! You're getting old'

Caroline replied: ‘haha I know! But still not as old as you. At least now you will be able to buy me a drink in the US haha..'

Three days later Rory teed off in the British Open held at Royal St. George's in Kent. After enduring a miserable weekend with bad scores in dreadful weather, he stayed on for a little while to congratulate Darren Clarke on winning his first major there.

Sharing in Darren's celebrations whetted his appetite for something else he was eagerly looking forward to that evening. In the previous days, he had arranged his first private date with Caroline. It was most probably the first time they were alone together.

She was doing a photo shoot on Sunday 17 July in London for Adidas and Stella McCartney. So they arranged to meet close to where Rory would be disembarking from the British Rail train he took to Waterloo.

Not far from Waterloo Station, a witness dining in the All Bar One restaurant spotted the pair eating. After they had finished their meal, they were spotted leaving and sharing a kiss goodbye in the street outside.

The excitement of meeting at the big fight night and the rendezvous at a London restaurant was just the very beginning. The couple would arrange a whole series of meetings in more exotic locations all around the world over the next two years.

In between those beautiful breakaways, Rory visited her home in Monaco as well as meeting her parents in Denmark. Later, Caroline would meet Rory's parents and stay with him at his plush new home (complete with mini golf course) in Holywood.

When Rory later sold that property, Caroline would jet into Palm Beach Gardens in Florida where Rory had purchased a beautiful lavish $15 million mansion with a mainly black and white interior theme.

At an American football game in late August, Rory, wearing the No 96 blue jersey of Yale University, presented Caroline with her very own club. He then planted a huge kiss on her lips after being egged on by the entire boisterous team.

The Titleist ‘Vokey' 60 degree wedge, which costs around £25, was engraved across the top of the blade with the word ‘Wozzilroy', a portmanteau of Wozniacki and McIlroy that a British tabloid came up with.

McIlroy was not only endorsing his liking for the newspaper term, he was also announcing to the world that, at that moment, the two were now a union. Interestingly, Rory and Caroline were following an illustrious line of sporting couples.

Many hailed from the world of tennis, such as Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi; Chris Evert and Greg Norman and, more recently, Kim Clijsters and Lleyton Hewitt; Martina Hingis and Sergio Garcia and Ana Ivanovic and Adam Scott.

Christmas 2011 was spent in Thailand with the couple going to visit a Buddhist Shrine. Both were pictured kneeling down at a temple in the beach resort of Hua Hin bowing their heads and with their hands clasped in prayer.

Caroline was playing in a World Tennis charity event on New Year's Day. She commented on how she also visited a market and was delighted to be given a lesson in how to cook Thai food. Rory, who was made an MBE in the Queens Honours list, said:

It is quite humbling to be included in such a list of worthy recipients. Many people on the list have made huge personal sacrifices and contributed significantly to society during their lives. I feel very fortunate.

Eight months after first meeting, and now very much in love, they could not stand being apart for too lengthy a period. So much so that Rory was literally dashing from golf courses to catch planes, trains and automobiles to be with her.

A case in point was Sunday 4 March 2012, which was the day Rory became world number one by winning the Honda Classic. How did he celebrate that feat? He caught a flight from Miami to New York to meet Caroline. But it was to be no ordinary lovey-dovey meeting.

Caroline was playing in Madison Square Garden in an exhibition with Maria Sharapova. Suddenly, Rory was climbing over the courtside barriers in jeans and t-shirt to play a few shots, much to the amusement of the crowd. Enjoying the moment, he said after:

Caroline turned to the crowd and asked if there were any hot guys who wanted to dance with her! And I'm like, well, I don't want anybody else dancing with you so I put my hand up. Thank God she didn't ask me to dance. I was much happier hitting a tennis shot.

The globetrotting and courting continued unabated. No amount of air miles or jet lag seemed to be a barrier. In mid October Caroline joined Rory at the Turkish Airlines World Golf finals where Rory finished last of the eight competitors.

A few days later and Rory was frantically trying to obtain a Russian visa so he could accompany her to Moscow for the Kremlin Cup the following week. Concerning his form in the Turkish event he said:

I'm not that disappointed as I have the afternoon off around the pool. I just came here because I've never played in Turkey and there were some good players here.

They spent a second successive Christmas together – this time in Australia – but not before Caroline had to deny engagement rumours in November (the result of a prank by Serena Williams' boyfriend) and Rory had to deny similar rumours just before Christmas.

Wozniacki was sensationally knocked out in the first round of the Brisbane International by a qualifier. But for the next week, photos circumnavigated the world of her and Rory having so much fun Down Under.

There was a trip to the Sydney Opera House and the undoubted highlight was the Sydney Tower Skywalk. Dressed in blue boiler suits high above the skyscrapers of Sydney, and well protected with straps, they walked along the edge of the top of the tower.

With beaming smiling faces behind dark sunglasses, they both took selfies to post on twitter. There was also a ‘sky photo' of them on top of New York's Empire State Building (I hope you bought her one of the many varieties of ‘King Kong' dolls Rors!).

At the end of that first week in January it was back to the grindstone for both. Rory had to play in Abu Dhabi the following week but as we have already seen, this was to be a year when he found it the toughest going of his golfing life.

In contrast to 2012, he fell into the doldrums in 2013. Apart from the rumors of marriage, he also had to make do with disquiet among his fellow professional and golf pundits who were not best happy with all the time he was talking away from golf.

Then at the Honda Classic in March – where exactly one year before he became world number one by winning it and then jetting straight to New York to see Caroline – he walked off the course and out of the tournament. He also had a go at the media over his love life:

I've read what's been written and just because I had a bad day on the golf course [walked off] and Caroline lost in Malaysia, it doesn't mean we're breaking up. Its sport and I'd like to keep my private life as private as possible. Everything on that front is great and I'm looking forward to seeing her next week when she jets into Miami.

The media smelt blood and they went straight for the jugular vein. They felt their relationship was on the rocks and they would stop at nothing to print it. They were completely wrong.

I still cannot believe how completely wrong the British and Irish media got it. So much so that I contacted many people I knew in the industry to tell them so. Reporters, writers, editors, broadcasters – I told them all but they just shrugged their shoulders.

It was as if they did not care if they were wrong. The saying goes that ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity', as it sells. So they just built up and sensationalized their version of the story for the public.

What makes the whole episode even more astonishing to me is that they were (and are) playing a very dangerous game. It seems as if the painful lessons learnt from past huge libel cases do not register.

The media seemed to be taking a gamble that Rory and Caroline were too young and too busy to be bothered taking them through the courts. They are playing Russian roulette. From the last book, here is what one tabloid ‘columnist' wrote about Rory splitting with Holly.

Like all these young men who think grass is always greener on the other fairway, Rory will learn the hard way that the burger never tastes as good as the steak. Here's to Holly – a classy birdie even when Rory's pursuing a bit of rough.

It is such a dangerous game they play. Newspaper bosses take note of this – at some stage in the future, some couple will produce a dossier of proof of being at weddings, parties, christenings, hotels or wherever to counteract all the days, weeks and months of untruths.

An Irish Sports editor said to me: ‘On what basis do you believe they have not broken up?' and a young woman with a website told me ‘Nope, they've split end of story'.

Here is that basis of what I believed back then. It was a firm belief based on painstakingly doing what the Irish and British media did not do: research, as well as going to sources in Denmark.