Press Eye Ltd/REX ShutterstockIt was a swing and a miss with Caroline Wozniacki, but Rory McIlroy scored a hole in one with current fiancée Erica Stoll.
McIlroy's love life has made as many headlines as his golf career, which the pro golfer admits affected his relationship with former fiancée Wozniacki. McIlroy, 27, opened up to the Irish Sunday Independent about his relationship with the tennis star and why it didn't work out in the end.
"I thought at the time that being with someone that was in a similar position to you was the obvious answer," McIlroy said of them both being at the top of their respective games. "But it isn't, because you can never get away from it. You can never detach yourself and try to come back to the real world."
With the red carpet lifestyle behind him, McIlroy is able to enjoy privacy with Stoll, a publicist whom he met during a golf tournament.
"That's why I feel in such a good place now," he explained. "I don't feel Erica wants to change me in any way. I can be myself around her; there's no bulls--t, no acting, no show."
McIlroy and Wozniacki dated from 2011 to 2014, but McIlroy called off their wedding after the invitations had already been mailed.
"The problem is mine," he said in a statement at the time. "I wish Caroline all the happiness she deserves and thank her for the great times we've had."
The golfer and Stoll took their relationship public in June 2015 and got engaged in December but reportedly had been dating for nearly a year.
"The thing I love about it is that we were friends before anything romantic happened," McIlroy told the newspaper. "We met when she was working for the PGA of America and renting a condo in Palm Beach, and I found it refreshing being with someone who was living a normal life rather than, 'Oh! My jet is 30 minutes late!'
"I could speak to her about anything, we ended up spending a bit of time together and realized that there was something more there," he continued. "I love that she knows everything about me, and there was no judgment there. There was no judgment from Day 1, which is huge, because that's very hard to find for someone in my position."