Rory McIlroy’s US Open Loss and Divorce About-Face With Erica Stoll

This is the way a golf drama continues: Not with a bang, but a whimper. Wait, make that a roar. A Rory? A Rory McIlroy. If you’ve been hearing more lately about drama from the khakis-and-polos set, join the (golf) club.

For the putt-putt inclined (myself included), McIlroy is a very, very good 35-year-old Irish golfer. Along with Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, he is one of three pro golfers to have ever won four majors by the age of 25. Another distinction he shares with Woods is a more dubious one: His personal life—namely his marital messes—have crept onto the immaculately manicured golf green.

In Woods’s case, the spectacle came in the form of the reveal of a sex addiction and a string of extramarital affairs, with the veritable fireworks display of then wife Elin Nordegren reportedly chasing Woods out of the house with a golf club in the wee hours of Thanksgiving night in 2009, then hoofing it after his car and smashing up the windows after discovering messages between him and one of his alleged mistresses. For his part, during his vehicular escape attempt, Woods drove into first a series of hedges, jumped a curb, then hit a fire hydrant, then, finally, a tree. (Nordegren told police that she had been inside the house when she heard the crash, and then came outside and broke the car window to rescue Woods.) In an instant, he went from being golf’s untouchable golden boy to simply untouchable,