TV presenter whose interview with Rory McIlroy sent tongues wagging

Almost exactly two years ago, rising TV star Amanda Balionis could not possibly have looked any happier.

Showing off an impressive diamond engagement ring, and with her arms wrapped around her long time boyfriend, she wrote: ‘Hey @BrynRenner. Forever sounds kinda perfect.’

She and Renner, a sports star turned football coach, had a beautiful beach wedding on December 3, 2022 in La Jolla – San Diego’s ‘jewel by the sea.’

At the lavish wedding they posed in front of a neon sign reading ‘The Renners’ and the bride and groom wore matching Nike hi-top sneakers in the colours of his football team. She even used their hashtag ‘Go Heels’ in honour of her groom.

Spool forward 14 months, though, and quite surprisingly given those recent romantic declarations her wedding ring was off.

Her hyphenated family name – ‘Balionis-Renner’ – was also no longer being used. Plain Amanda Balionis went on a girls trip to Las Vegas and then two skiing trips in quick succession, again in an all-girls gaggle both times.

And then on May 12, beneath an Instagram picture of her interviewing golf superstar Rory McIlroy on CBS, a friend, Camille Stroud, wrote: ‘You two’ alongside a heart emoji.

It was at this point, that suspicions started to take root about just what was going on between sparkly Balionis, who has worked across CBS’ golf input since 2017, and the just-divorcing Rory McIlroy, a £225 million sportsman.

He announced on Monday May 13, quite unexpectedly, that his seven year marriage to pretty Erica Stoll had irretrievably broken down. They have a three-year-old daughter, Poppy.

But it seems that while he and Stoll were on the outs – while he and Amanda Balionis were apparently drawing ever closer.

So who is the woman who has caught Rory’s eye? Balionis is the daughter of Tony, who died in 2019, and Dana, both avid golf players. She used to take her father on in putting games – playing for quarters. Mother Dana told Fore magazine a year ago: ‘She’d say, ‘I like it, but volleyball is more exciting. She was just so active. Golf was never active enough for her.’ She added: ‘She’s never loved golf more than she does now.’

She made her debut for CBS Sports show The 19th Hole at the 2017 Genesis Open at Riviera CC, and now she does interviews and analysis at all of the tour events for the network.

She has also done NFL and college football sideline reporting, and was CBS’s first-ever social media reporter for the Superbowl.

She has a degree in broadcasting from Hofstra University in New York and worked her way up to the big leagues by covering high school sports on digital platforms and on cable. Her big break came when she was working in the media department of the sporting goods manufacturers Callaway and was asked to present a slot on CBS. She said: ‘The nerves were insane, but there was also this feeling that I had worked so hard for this. I had kind of given up on the dream, and I thought, ‘I’m going to be live on CBS for at least one time, so, technically, I achieved my dream.’

The chairman of CBS Sports Sean McManus believes she is a breath of fresh air who adds a ‘different perspective.’ He went on: ‘She has a lot of credibility with golfers, and they respond well to her.’

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The job is to interview live without a prompter or notes, and to strike a friendly enough tone to put the golf stars at their ease.

A source at CBS who knows Amanda well said: ‘Amanda has always wanted to be on television. It’s her dream. She’s very likeable but one of the most ambitious people I’ve met. I’ve known her for a long time. She won’t mind having her name linked to the story because of the profile it’s giving her. I know she’ll be loving it. I don’t mean that cruelly. She’s a nice girl, but she’s ambitious. This will give her a leg up.’

The source added: ‘Before all this, I wouldn’t have said they were any closer than she is with other players. She’s got a flirty nature, which works well on television. She has chats with the players. I guess she and Rory get on well, but I don’t know whether they’re in a relationship or not.’

Her mum Dana told Fore: ‘It’s really been amazing. Just all of the twists and turns to get to where she is. It’s been one crazy thing after another. The stars just kept lining up.’

In April this year, two months after Balionis apparently split from her husband, McIlroy took time out of his busy schedule to film a short video supporting Puppies & Golf, the non-profit founded by Balionis in 2020 and aimed at advocating for rescue dogs, rehousing and in some instances retraining them as support animals for veterans.

Then on Sunday May 12th, the two seemed warmly at ease in each other’s company, even flirtatious.

Balionis asked him in a TV interview: ‘What gear did you have to find to assert your dominance once more over Quail Hollow?’ Later, she asked him to tell her: ‘Physically how good your game feels.’

It was an account on Twitter which first made explicit the inference of coupledom hinted at by Balionis’ pal Camille Stroud.

On May 16th a post ran: ‘So Rory was possibly getting with Amanda Balionis from CBS. It’s a rumour I heard from the divorce. That would be a spicy meatball if true. I like both of them. Maybe I made it up.’

This was followed the next day by a blind item on the gossip site DeuxMoi which then started circulating widely on Twitter including via the anonymous’ LIV insider’ account.

The anonymous DeuxMoi item said that the golfer had been spotted: ‘all around San Diego. More specifically…the Crown Point neighborhood of Pacific Beach.’The neighborhood, more than 2,500 miles from McIlroy’s home in Jupiter, Florida, is where Balionis lives in a two-bed home she bought for $789,000 in 2020.

According to the source: ‘My sister was at a restaurant, and he came in to pick up a ‘to go’ and used the name ‘Amanda’ as the pick-up. He paid cash – only a few people noticed him, and he was out!’

Initially, people couldn’t quite believe that it was true. However as time passes, without any comment from McIlroy’s management or Ms Balionis’ flack at 42 West, the rumours have started to be treated as fact.

It would be normal for untrue reports to be denied.

This week Dottie Pepper, a pro golfer who now works alongside Balionis covering the sport, said: ‘No! Absolutely not! No!’ when asked if she had any comment on her colleague being an item with Rory McIlroy.

Darren Heitner, a lawyer who plays golf with Balionis estranged husband Bryn Renner similarly declined to comment rather than issue any denial.

One senior source on the golf tour says: ‘It was totally news to the TV crowd if it has been going on. Her co workers are as surprised as anyone else. Clearly they have kept it extremely discreet.’

He added: ‘It’s not one of those affairs where everyone knows about it and you are just waiting for it to come out.

‘The first anyone was really aware was from a Tweet. It was from an anonymous source so nobody really was sure how much notice to pay to it, but then it got bigger and bigger online until it came out as a story in the end.

‘That’s not to say that nothing was going on, but just that this was no Tiger Woods type situation. Everyone was actually quite surprised that the marriage had broken down in the first place. He is not one of the golfers who has a reputation for womanising at all.’

You might think that’s a curious thing to say as McIlroy famously broke tennis player Caroline Wozniaki’s heart when he dumped her just after she had sent out wedding invitations.

He also had a high profile romance with model Nadia Forde, and was linked even to Meghan Markle, pre Prince Harry.

But in the context of the bunkers and bunk ups world of international golf, that makes him pretty much one of the innocents.

Take Tiger Woods. The golfer reportedly confessed to sleeping with 120 women during his marriage to former nanny Elin Nordgren. Apparently she only decided that she was going to leave him almost a year after the first scandal erupted …when the daughter of their neighbours was named as his 15th mistress.

A veteran writer said: ‘I could name you three players who have been the best players in the world who had that exactly the same lifestyle, the same numbers and everything as Tiger Woods. Actually, two of them used to compete with each other to see how many women they could sleep with. It’s nothing new in golf. They are young rich good looking and on the road for months, and many of the golf wives just turn a blind eye.’

As the late golf commentator Peter Alliss sardonically put it: ‘Tiger failed the eleventh commandment ‘Thou shalt not be found out’.

During golf tournaments, there is a lively social scene. The players and their entourages can be found in hotel bars or local restaurants as the tour moves internationally. Organisations like the PGA habitually employ pretty young golf fans to do administrative roles. Sponsors similarly send teams of attractive women who orbit the players.

Some wives insist on coming with their husbands so that they can keep an eye on what goes on at the bar, but often once there are children who need to be in school, this falls away – meaning that the husbands spend most of the year separated from their wives and families. No wonder that the sport is such a matrimonial graveyard.

Rory McIlroy met New York born wife Erica Stoll through the game. He overslept during the 2012 Ryder Cup and nearly missed his tee time. Erica, who was working on PGA transportation, arranged a police escort to get him to the course in Medinah, Illinois, in time.

They kept on bumping into each other as Stoll continued to work for the PGA and the couple started dating at the end of 2014, after his split from Wozniacki. They got engaged in Paris a year later and were married in 2017 at the 13th-century Ashford Castle in County Ma y o , with guests including actor Jamie Dornan, who grew up in the same town as McIlroy, One Direction’s Niall Horan and Coldplay musician Chris Martin. Ed Sheeran and Stevie Wonder provided the entertainment. The celebrations were said to have cost £400,000.

Home was a £7 million nine-bedroom, ten-bathroom mansion in Florida’s exclusive Bear’s Club gated community, founded by golf legend Jack Nicklaus, where basketball star Michael Jordan and tennis sisters Venus and Serena Williams are neighbours.

There was also property in Wentworth, Surrey, the home of European golf, where he and Erica were said to have spent £10million on renovations. The thinking was that the family would take up full-time residence there when Poppy was ready for secondary school.

Sadly, it has all fallen apart long before she reached that milestone.

A source told US Weekly magazine said that Stoll felt ‘lonely’ in the marriage as they were effectively leading separate lives. The source said: ‘She 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.’

Another potential factor in the end of the marriage – other than the constant travelling and temptations – is McIlroy’s role in the schism which split the game, when the Saudi-backed LIV golf set up as a rival to the PGA tour in 2022. McIlroy was the figurehead for the PGA, and strongly backed the tour.

In the second series of the Netflix documentary Full Swing, filmed last summer, you see McIlroy sacrificing his own game in order to stand up for what he believes in. He muses on how ‘off’ his game is, confessing: ‘: ‘I s**t myself with left pins. My technique isn’t anywhere near where it used to be.’

And he tells the documentary: ‘It’s all consuming. It’s a full time job playing golf and having all the other stuff. You get fatigued. I had to ask myself a lot of questions. It’s so difficult.’

Just before the US Open he discovers that the warring sides have come to an agreement – and he didn’t even know that the announcement was coming.

‘Why did I waste 12 months of my life to fight for something that was always going to come back together again?’ he says.

There was widespread sympathy for Rory McIlroy on the circuit – and its no surprise that some of it came from Amanda Balionis.

She tells the doc: ‘It’s so rare that PGA tour players take on the responsibility that we’ve seen Rory McIlroy take on.

‘How can he be so invested into what’s going on between LIV and the PGA Tour and go out there and beat the other 150 best players in the world? That’s not a sustainable place to live of an already full plate and putting the PGA Tour on your back.’

Did this sympathy blossom into love? Certainly there are signs that they started to become more closely aligned.

Another source who is close to McIlroy said: ‘No one will be surprised that Rory has someone else lined up. It’s textbook behaviour. Look back at his love life. This isn’t a guy who likes to be alone. The next conquest ALWAYS appears before the current one goes. I’ve known the guy a long time, and there is always an overlap.

He added: ‘I think he and Amanda are close, and there are lots of rumours circulating, but I’ve not seen them together. I tell you what, though, I wouldn’t be surprised – she’s his type.

‘She’s blonde which is his preference. I was very close to Rory when his relationship with Caroline ended, and we were telling him not to be rash. But he was desperate to move on once he’d made the decision. He’d decided he wanted someone who was homely and not dashing around all over the place at sports events. Now he’s bored with homely and is bound to go for someone dashing around all over the place and going to sports events. It’s funny, really. Caroline must be laughing her socks off.’