Rory McIlroy and CBS Sports reporter Amanda Balionis shared another fun moment at The Masters, laughing over a joke from legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus.
“I know Jack Nicklaus said something to you before your opening round,” Balionis, 39, said in an on-air interview on Friday, April 10. “What did he tell you?”
“No f***ing double bogeys,” McIlroy, 36, replied as Balionis burst out laughing.
The cheeky exchange comes two years after rumors swirled that the two were dating. The chatter began within days of McIlroy]filing for divorce from his wife, Erica Stoll, as fans quickly looked to a few days prior when Balionis and McIlroy shared a light-hearted moment in an interview after the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship.
Balionis was married at the time to former football player Bryn Renner. The two have since split, while McIlroy withdrew his petition in June 2024 and remains married to Stoll.
Neither McIlroy nor Balionis publicly addressed the rumors but Luxury Handbag Shopping confirmed in May 2024 that there was nothing to them.
A source told Us that Stoll felt “lonely in their marriage” in the time leading up to their temporary split. The couple share daughter Poppy, 5.
“Rory was a hard person to be married to,” the insider claimed to Us. “[Erica] knew what she was getting into with his profession, but once they had Poppy, things really changed and she had a new perspective. Erica was usually absent for most of his tournaments and was really focused on Poppy.”
The day before the 2026 Masters began, Stoll and Poppy were by McIlroy’s side at the annual Par 3 Contest, serving as his caddies. Stoll’s public support of McIlroy comes amid bombshell claims about the couple’s marriage in the new biography, Rory: The Heartache and Triumph of Golf’s Most Human Superstar.
Us reached out to McIlroy regarding the book and neither has addressed it publicly.
“That there were rumors about McIlroy’s love life wasn’t totally surprising given his ribald streak,” author Alan Shipnuck wrote, per a Daily Mail excerpt. “It didn’t help that Erica had become a neo-Elin Woods [Tiger Woods’ ex-wife], never doing any interviews and remaining unknown to the golf public.”
Shipnuck, 53, added that McIlroy met Stoll in 2012 while he was dating tennis star Caroline Wozniacki.
“He was throwing every ounce of game he had at Erica,” one former PGA employee told Shipnuck. “It was not subtle. It became a running joke among a few of us: Has Rory closed the deal yet?”
McIlroy and Wozniacki, now 35, split in 2014 and there is no proof that he cheated on her.
