Golf Spelled Backwards

Who is Rory McIlroy dating these days? A PGA of America employee named Erica Stoll. Rumors of a McIlroy-Stoll romance first cropped up in early 2015, but something that just happened is pretty much the confirmation that they are dating. And what was that? McIlroy ventured to Rochester, New York, for a date with Stoll, who is from the area. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle newspaper reported : The top-ranked golfer in the world was seen Saturday night having dinner at 2Vine in downtown Rochester and then stopped in at Magpie Pub in the trendy Park Avenue neighborhood. ... "As they were leaving, everybody in the restaurant was shouting, 'Oh my God, that's Rory McIlroy! That's Rory McIlroy!' " 2Vine hostess Jordan Cannan said. The dinner reservation for four was in Stoll's name, said another hostess, Dakotah Schickling. Stoll is 29 years old, three years older than McIlroy, and is the manager of championship volunteer operations for the...

American lifestyle magazine Town & Country must like something about Rory McIlroy's lifestyle: The publication - the oldest continuously published general interest magazine in the United States, according to Wikipedia - includes McIlroy on its ranking of the Top 50 Bachelors of 2015 . Here's what T&C says about McIlroy , who ranked No. 35: Why him? The Irish golf phenom, 25, was the first European to win three different majors, nabbing a reported $100 million deal with Nike in the process. Likes : Controversy. He has traded insults with the Ryder Cup and Tiger Woods. Natural habitat : Gym. Golf. Repeat. Caveat : He credits his 2014 wins to breaking up with fiancee Caroline Wozniacki after the invites had gone out. Frankly, those comments don't betray any particular knowledge about McIlroy on the part of Town & Country . But, then, knowledge rarely drives such lists anyway. These things are supposed to fun, attention-grabbing, debate-inducing. And ...

It happens to the best of us. Or, well, to the best of them: A shot so bad that you are stunned a golfer so good could hit it. But mis-hits have always been part of golf, and many giants of the game - Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus among them - have talked about golf as a process of managing the bad shots. So Rory McIlroy's awful shot in Round 2 of the 2014 DP World Tour Championship in Dubai? Hey, just one of those things. See, you really do have something in common with Rory! If you're down about your golf game, watch this and feel a little better: Need even more of a pick-me-up? Watch Stacy Lewis' even worst shot , and the 1-inch putt Lexi Thompson missed .

What's a "premature ejacubration"? Well, it's when you pop your cork earlier than you wanted to: Love Graeme McDowell's reaction. Rory McIlroy and McDowell were waiting to let loose with a Ryder Cup celebration, but they had to let Zach Johnson putt out first. Unfortunately, Rory just couldn't last. At least Rory was appropriately apologetic about his, um, performance issue: I swear this usually never happens!!! 😂 #premature #sorryzach https://t.co/LGTEW5b2bK — Rory Mcilroy (@McIlroyRory) September 29, 2014

Wedding bells are in the air for Rory McIlroy and Caroline Wozniacki. Well, they haven't set a date yet, but he did put a ring on it: Happy New Year everyone! I have a feeling it's going to be a great year!! My first victory of 2014 #shesaidyes !! pic.twitter.com/gxO7rDDyPY — Rory Mcilroy (@McIlroyRory) December 31, 2013 Congratulations to them both! Caroline followed with her own tweet: Happy New Year everyone! Rory and I started 2014 with a bang! ... I said YES!!!! pic.twitter.com/J7c2pXgsdC — Caroline Wozniacki (@CaroWozniacki) December 31, 2013 Started 2014 with a bang? I bet she did, I bet she did ....

Back when Rory McIlroy bought his Florida house, I posted some photos of the exterior and lot and suggested that it wasn't all that impressive. Rory, I aplogize. Your house is beautiful and wonderful - on the inside. Here's a tour:

Did Rory McIlroy screw up his game when he ditched Titleist clubs for the lure of Nike Golf's money, and started playing Nike clubs? That's what some golf experts (real and imagined) would have you believe, including Nick Faldo and Johnny Miller, both of whom have criticized McIlroy for switching clubs. But Curtis Strange is having none of it. Now, Strange happens to be paid by Nike, too, just like Rory (which Strange rightfully points out himself). But when he's right, he's right. And everything Strange says here (comments he made to a Reuters reporter during the Valero Texas Open) is right: "I don't think clubs have anything to do with it at all," the American told Reuters in an interview. "I'll qualify that by saying I'm also a paid endorser of Nike like Rory but beyond that... switching clubs is no big thing. "I switched three or four times in my career and it took me a day to get used to them, it's all overblown. I thin...

Golf Channel's Jason Sobel tweets the details of a text message that Tiger Woods sent to Rory McIlroy after winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational: Rory McIlroy on a text message he got from Tiger Woods this morning: "He told me to get my finger out of my ass and win this week." — Jason Sobel (@JasonSobelGC) March 26, 2013 Actually, I'm guessing that it's Caroline's finger that's up Rory's ass.

And here it is, the first television commercial for Nike Golf featuring both Tiger Woods and Nike's new wonderboy Rory McIlroy: Entertaining. Nike always seems to do a good job with its lighthearted, personality-driven television spots, don't they?

Here are some more photos of Rory McIlroy's new house, which he recently purchased for $9.5 million in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. The house is in a small, gated community named Old Gate, and it backs up to the Intracoastal Waterway. Presumably, Rory - and his love, Caroline Wozniacki - will have a nice, big boat of some sort, probably a yacht, sitting soon in the water out back. Rory's house, by the way, is the one with the dark gray roof; the sort of rusty tan-colored roof next door is the neighbor's house. On the other side of Rory's new Florida house is, currently, an empty lot. If I was Rory, I'd buy that empty lot myself to prevent anyone moving in next door. Because, looking at these photos makes it clear: This home doesn't really come with much in the way of seclusion or privacy. Privacy from riff-raff like you and me, sure; privacy from rich riff-raff? Not so much. I'm sure the home is absolutely lovely indoors; it has six bedrooms and...

No secret that golf's best players receive appearance fees - openly when playing outside of the USA, under-the-table (or through some other rule-skirting arrangement) inside the USA. And the most expensive golfer to buy for your tournament? Tiger Woods, natch. But Rory McIlroy appears to be giving Tiger a run for that money - Rory's price has gone up. You might recall several years back when Tiger got a reported $2 million to show up at the 2009 Australian Masters (he should have asked for more - that's where Woods' relationship with a woman not his wife was noticed by a tabloid). The Victorian state government - which is to say, Australian taxpayers - even picked up part of that tab to get Woods Down Under. Well, this year, the Australian Open thought it had bought the presence of McIlroy for $1 million. Tournament organizers believed they had a deal in place for that appearance fee - but then Rory went and won the PGA Championship, his second major. And that...

Topless. This photo of Rory McIlroy napping while laying out on a beach was posted to Twitter by his girlfriend, Caroline Wozniacki. Who tweeted that it was revenge for an image of her sleeping that Rors had posted. Ahhhhh, young love. And Luke Donald had a funny reaction ... well, here, I'll just show you: Shaved armpits?? RT @ carowozniacki Just getting my revenge after @ mcilroyrory posted a pic of me sleeping last week twitter.com/CaroWozniacki/… — Luke Donald (@LukeDonald) November 17, 2012 Here's another photo of McIlroy on the the beach, this one at age 2 (also shared by Rory on Twitter):

The above is some video from the Rory McIlroy-Tiger Woods exhibition match in China, video that captures a couple conversations between the two. They obviously have a great rapport, a genuine like for one another. Tiger even drops a few conversational f-bombs into the mix. But more interesting, probably, are some of the comments captured of Woods talkinga bout his game, explaining to Rory what Sean Foley wants him to do and some problems he is having.

Randell Mell of the Golf Channel just tweeted Rory McIlroy's comment following his loss to Tiger Woods at the Turkish Airlines 8-man tournament. Rory said he was "not that disappointed" at losing to Tiger, Mell tweeted, because "I've got the afternoon off around the pool." If Tiger Woods had been the one who lost, and then said that, there'd be furious tweets and angry columns for weeks, denouncing Woods for having the nerve to say something like that. Doesn't he care? How dare he make light of losing! Not a criticism of McIlroy, by the way. Just an example of how fans' natural biases cause us to react differently to different people and different situations. Marion Jones is a pariah because she doped to win her gold medals; Lance Armstrong doped to win his Tour de Frances, but, hey, he beat cancer! If only Marion had had the foresight to get a terrible disease, and then attach her name to a charity. We all bring biases. We all have filters...

(Photo: @HFCSween/Twitter) I think we can all agree that Rory McIlroy has great taste in women. His current girlfriend is tennis ingenue Caroline Wozniacki. And Caro is nice to look at. But above is Rory's childhood sweetheart, Holly Sweeney. Look at that face! That nose , those lips. She's perfection. Yes, put me on Team Holly.

From Win McMurry's Twitter feed: Uh ... ummm ... Win, are you sure that "shag" means the same thing to you as it means to Rory? I assume you were talking about the dance and not, well, shagging. But either way - can I cut in? (With you, not with Rory.) Wouldn't it be great if the Golf Channel replaced every one its announcers with a clone of Win McMurry? She's delicious! Make that, shagadelic, baby!