McIlroy was hunting Tiger at age 9, says uncle

In an impressive early show of ambition and fearlessness, a nine-year-old Rory McIlroy wrote a letter to Tiger Woods warning he was coming for his crown as the world’s best golfer.

McIlroy recalled the letter in a New York Times Magazine profile by Charles Siebert.

Flushed with success after winning the 1998 Doral-Publix Junior Golf Classic in Florida, McIlroy decided to notify his boyhood hero, then world number one.