The Loop

A nine-year-old Rory McIlroy to Tiger Woods: 'I'm coming to get you'

March 31, 2015

When Rory McIlroy was nine, he apparently made his intentions known in a letter he wrote to Tiger Woods, Charles Siebert reveals in this New York Times Magazine profile of Woods.

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(Getty Images)

"No one can recall the note's precise wording," Siebert wrote, "but its general thrust, as Brian McIlroy, Rory's uncle and godfather, paraphrased in an email, put Woods on notice: I'm coming to get you. This is the beginning. Watch this space.'

"When I met McIlroy, now the world's No. 1 golfer, in New York in December, I asked him about the letter. A lot of those memories have kind of blurred together,' he said somewhat sheepishly. But, yeah, it went something like that.'

"McIlroy's Tiger letter' most likely never got to its intended addressee, but by now its message surely has. McIlroy has already won the U.S. Open, the British Open and two P.G.A. Championships, becoming just the third golfer, after Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, to win four majors by the age of 25."

McIlroy needs only a victory in the Masters to complete the career grand slam.