Rory McIlroy played inspired golf in winning the British Open, and he may have drawn his inspiration from a 25-year-old lingerie model.
UK media outlets are giving at least some of the credit for McIlroy’s third major championship to Nadia Forde, a dark-haired beauty from Ireland who has been linked to the Northern Irishman.
McIlroy and Forde were spotted leaving a Dublin nightclub together around 3 a.m. last month, but both have been vague about the nature of their relationship.
“The bottom line with me and Rory is we have mutual friends who introduced us and we’ve been in each other’s company,” Forde told MailOnline.com.
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But the site paints the pair as being more than friends, reporting that McIlroy blew off a practice session leading up the British Open at Royal Liverpool to be at Forde’s side following a scary car crash while she was traveling from London to Manchester. Forde was not seriously hurt in the crash, Mail Online reported, though her car flipped “six times” during the accident. Forde made a vague reference to the incident on July 15, posting on Instagram that she was feeling “very loved and very very lucky,” while posting an image that read “I am the luckiest girl in the world.”
While stories are surfacing about the single-since-May golfer’s budding romance with the brunette, McIlroy’s friends are insisting that the two are not dating.
“He thinks she is lovely but she’s just not his type,” a friend told the Irish Independent. “He loves sporty girls. He’s not looking for a girlfriend anyway.”
McIlory’s ex, Caroline Wozniacki, certainly fits the “sporty girls” profile. The Danish tennis star was set to wed McIlroy before he called off their engagement in May after sending out invitations to their never-to-be wedding.
In an interesting coincidence, Wozniacki won her first tournament of 2014 on Sunday — the same day McIlroy captured the Claret Jug. The 24-year-old got a dig in on her 5-foot-8 ex last week, too, sharing a photo of herself shopping in Istanbul wearing high heels with the caption, “It’s been 3 years since I have worn heels on a normal day out. #feelsgood #looksgood.” McIlroy and Wozniacki were together from 2011-2014.
As for Forde, McIlroy’s buddies insist that they’ve only been in the same place at the same time because they share mutual friends. The model is echoing those remarks, laughing off bookmakers making her the 6-1 favorite to be the golfer’s next gal pal.
“I wouldn’t be putting any money on me,” she said, adding, “My love life is pretty non-existent at the moment and that’s fine, it’s not my top priority.”