Meghan Markle flirted so hard with Rory McIlroy that her boyfriend asked if she cheated on him with the champion golfer, a new book claims.
McIlroy, now 33, first met Markle, now 40, after he “unexpectedly” nominated her for the Ice Bucket Challenge — and she insisted that he come to her boyfriend’s New York City apartment to try the ice cream himself. dump on her.
The August 2014 meeting came just weeks after the Northern Irishman, then 25, won the Open Championship in Great Britain, Tom Bower writes in his new book, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors, which was released in the UK this week.
McIlroy had just separated from his blonde fiancée, Danish tennis star Caroline Wozniacki, and it was reported that he was chasing brunettes,” Bower wrote.
After McIlroy and Markle posted the Ice Bucket Challenge video, which raised money for motor neuron disease research, they enjoyed a drink at the Fitzpatrick Hotel, where the athlete was staying.
They were noticed by the owner of the hotel, John Fitzpatrick, who invited them to dinner with 20 friends that evening in Cipriani.
“The next morning McIlroy arrived [Ridgewood Country Club] 30 miles away to play in a new league. Worse for wear and tear after a hectic night, it dropped to 101st place. Still, as usual, he refused to sleep by the golf course to be ready the next day. Instead, he drove back to New York to see Meghan. His performance suffered.
“I wasn’t quite in my game,” he later confessed. “I was enjoying it.”
Back home in Toronto at the end of the week with her boyfriend, Chef Cory Vitiello, Markle gushed about the sports star on her now-defunct blog, “The Tig.”
“Oh yeah. Rory McIlroy. DE Rory McIlroy. Whispered (and screamed) that I was the best golfer in the world, loved by Tiger, respected by Palmer, and dumped icy cold water on my lonely head for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. That Rory McIlroy.
“He’s a force who tends to work really hard and play hard – enjoying intense exercises to back his title, and embracing nights of sipping
Opus One (its bold and impressive wine choice) and enjoy group dinners at Cipriani – for balance, of course.
And yet, beyond his work/play ethic, this man’s most endearing quality is his character – as real and honest as they come, appreciating a simple smile, never shying away from a fan photo, enjoying a plate of pasta with veal ragout, and the expressing a love for his parents that is rarely seen in men his age. Or at any age, to be honest. He’s not just the real deal…
he is real. And maybe that’s what makes him even more cherished.”
Bower writes that Markle, who was then starring in ‘Suits’, “was eager to use their close relationship to promote herself,” adding: “She encouraged the media to publish photos of McIlroy and herself. As she would later admit, “she would occasionally put up a paparazzi photo or let information slip to the press.”
Asked by Vitiello if she was in a relationship with McIlroy, Markle insisted their time together was innocent, Bower writes. “He believed her.”
That same year, Markle used connections to deliver a speaking engagement at the One Young World conference in Dublin, Bower writes.
“Excited about her trip, she posted a message to an Irish friend of McIlroy’s: ‘Lock something down. I’m leaving there October 14-17. Have a nice evening X MM’,” Bower wrote.
Markle and her boyfriend flew from Toronto in a Netjet paid for by McIlroy, sources told Bower.
On October 17, Markle and McIlroy dined at the chic restaurant Fade Street Social in Dublin. “She was seen as ‘beaten’ while staring intently at McIlroy,” by a newspaper gossip columnist, and Vitiello was annoyed.
“Again he challenged Meghan. ‘Was there an affair?'” he asked angrily.
Meghan emphatically denied that she had betrayed him, Bower writes. She said she and McIlroy were just friends and “again he believed her.”
Markle’s agent called the paper for a correction, and the next day it published a story about Markle and Vitiello, which read: “They are madly in love… The two of them were sewn on the hip the entire time they spent in Ireland.”
Meghan was “relieved,” Bower concluded. “The golfer was not her future, and Cory was still her Toronto facilitator.”