Newsrooms all across the world dropped everything this morning when the news emerged that Rory McIlroy and Caroline Wozniacki's marriage was off.
Now obviously, it's very sad and Rory is very cut up about it, as Ewan Murray reported in the Guardian today. We sympathise. However, we are duty bound to tell you what we know. The relationship was beset by a series of little incidents and slights that chipped away at its previously impregnable edifice. So, here are the real reasons Rory and Caroline's wedding was cancelled.
Wozniaki switched over the channel when 'Results From Northern Ireland' came on BBC Final Score
In many ways this incident signalled the beginning of the end for the pair. On one listless Saturday afternoon, they were lounging about watching sport on the telly, still soaking up the discussion and analysis of that day's Premier League games, when, as per usual, Mark Sidebottom burst in without warning to tell everyone how Ards got on against Glentoran at the Oval.
Wozniacki did as millions before her have done, groaned and changed the channel.
In truth, the pair never recovered after that.
Washing machine glory
Rory McIlroy's finest hour before winning the US Open in 2011 was in 1997 when he appeared on the Gerry Kelly talk show on UTV and chipped a golf ball into a washing machine at the second time of asking. He and his wife-to-be used to watch and chuckle at the video regularly on youtube. However disaster struck when they attempted the trick again on a lazy Sunday afternoon (it was around the time last year when Rory was missing all those cuts).
Wozniacki, not noted for her golfing prowess, succeeded in knocking the ball in the washing machine on her first go. She leapt around the place screaming and whooping and hugging her boyfriend. Rory feigned happiness at the time but this incident ate away at him for a while.
She said Holywood was too fake and superficial for her
Wozniacki found the glitz, over-hyped glamour and inauthenticity of the small town of Holywood in Co. Down too much for her. She was often unwilling and hesitant about going there and preferred to hang around in New York and Los Angeles. Rory found this hard to deal with.
She insisted on leaving photos of Michael Laudrup around the house
An odd one here. The headline sums it up as concisely and succinctly as I can do down here. Wozniacki insisted on leaving photos of Michael Laudrup (most of them dashing portraits of the man in his mid-to-late 80s pomp) around their house.
The odd thing is, McIlroy is a big fan of the Danish side of 1986-1992. It is one of his great passions. He loved the powerful finishing of Preben Elkjaer, he admired the sturdy tenacity of Morten Olsen, he gloried in the dash of little Jesper Olsen and delighted in the inventiveness of Jan Molby.
The one player he couldn't abide by was Michael Laudrup.
Alas, that was the player to which Wozniacki was devoted. I ask you now, how can a relationship like that work?
#NoWordOfALie
