Rory McIlroy will miss Open Championship with ankle injury

World No. 1 and defending champion Rory McIlroy will not be in The Open Championship field at St. Andrews next weekend after suffering an ankle injury playing pick-up soccer.

McIlroy captured the 2014 Open title at Royal Liverpool wire-to-wire, eventually winning the tournament by two strokes over Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia. He won his fourth major title three weeks later at Valhalla Golf Club.

He will be hard-pressed to defend his PGA Championship title or win a fifth major in 2015 (or steal some thunder from Jordan Spieth, for that matter), with the season's final major being just a little more than a month away.

McIlroy finished fourth at the 2015 Masters and did not factor at the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay, where Spieth won his second consecutive big-boy tournament.