You can trace the arc of Rory McIlroy’s success through real estate. Last autumn his childhood home in Holywood, near Belfast went on the market, several years after his family had sold up. The asking price: $325,000.

The four-time major winner, pictured after a Shanghai victory in 2011,  bought his own first house a few miles away from his parents but sold that in 2012, with a tag of $2.7 million. Now the Forecaddie hears McIlroy is selling his mansion in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
The price this time? An eye-watering $12.9 million. 
The Man Out Front also hears McIlroy is moving just five minutes away to the exclusive Bear’s Club, where he has bought the former home of Ernie Els (the Big Easy has decamped to a new pad at nearby Old Palm Golf Club, where fellow South African Louis Oosthuizen lives).
McIlroy is one of several high-profile Tour players who practise at the exclusive Bear’s Club. They include Dustin Johnson and Rickie Fowler.
The former World No. 1 bought the secluded waterfront home five years ago when he was dating tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. He paid $9.5 million for the home in January, 2013. He married Erica Stoll in April of 2017. 
The property boasts more than 10,000 square feet of living space and includes an adjacent empty lot that the golfer also purchased. The house was built in 2010 and has six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a soaring double-height living space and a synthetic putting green by the pool. You can take a look at the home here.
McIlroy wasn’t deterred by the property taxes, which in 2016 were more than $104,000—less than the bonus a Tour player makes for finishing 70th in the FedEx Cup.
No word yet on how much McIlroy paid to make Els’ spread his new marital home.