This is starting to become the year of tying the knot for the game’s stars. Sergio García has announced plans to marry US journalist Angela Akins this year, although without revealing the date and venue yet, and another player who is much further advanced with his own plans is Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy (at 27, 10 years younger than the Spaniard).
He and fiancée Erica Stoll (from Rochester in New York) are expected to wed in April after the US Masters – the one major McIlory needs to win to joint the elite career Grand Slam club of Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tiger Woods – in Mayo’s Ashford Castle.
Reconverted into a five-star luxury hotel next to Lough Corrib in the west of Ireland, the castle complex includes a nine-hole golf course and renowned falconry academy.
According to the Irish Daily Mail, Mcilroy and 29-year-old Stoil (who works for the PGA of America) have sent out their wedding invitations. The pair made their first public appearance at the Irish Open in May 2015, and the golfer reportedly proposed in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower in December that same year.
The wedding will come three years after McIlroy called off his engagement to tennis star Caroline Wozniacki, reportedly over the phone and just days after they had sent out their wedding invitations.
Now he says he is a different person since meeting Stoll. "It’s a bit like yin and yang, in terms of what I do on the course and how, when I get home, I’m able to detach myself and just be a normal person. It’s great to have that balance, and Erica has given me that. She has made me realise that this is what I want, what I need."
