Tiger Woods to Rory McIlroy: ‘I’m not going to let you win a green jacket next year’

“We talked about a few things and he’s telling me like, ‘I’m not going to let you win a green jacket next year,’” McIlroy said, talking to reporters Wednesday while preparing for Thursday’s kickoff to the playoffs at The Barclays.

Might Tiger’s joking boast to keep Rory from earning the career grand slam (the Northern Irishman needs just the Masters to complete his résumé) be a response to McIlroy putting him in the rearview mirror?

After all, the 38-year-old Woods finished a wretched, injury-wracked 2014 season with a missed cut at the PGA Championship in which McIlroy captured for his fourth major title. Woods may have a bad back, but he’s not deaf. He was standing right there on Jimmy Fallon’s stage Monday night when his 25-year-old BFF assigned him to the history books.

“I guess this little run that I’m on makes me appreciate what [Tiger’s] done in the past. Just phenomenal, just to keep a run like this going and he’s done like way more than me,” McIlroy, who went back-to-back-to-back at the British Open, Firestone, and Valhalla, said during the superstars’ much-anticipated joint appearance on Fallon’s “Tonight Show.”

“Makes me appreciate how hard he worked and how dominant a figure he was in our game,” McIlroy said, employing the past tense to describe Woods’ career.

Golf’s Nos. 1 and 11, who spent Monday together promoting Nike’s new Vapor irons, struck up a friendship a couple years back when they went head-to-head several times in what seemed the start of a beautiful rivalry. Then McIlroy changed equipment and fell off the map in 2013 while Woods put up a five-win season. And then in 2014, Rory returned to form and Tiger broke down.

“It was good to catch up with [Woods]. I haven’t really seen him much for a few months really,” said McIlroy, who backtracked a bit from his “past tense” comments.

“I know that he’s working his butt off to get back here and get back to where he wants to be,” noted McIlroy, who said he and Woods are competitive, but the Ulsterman limits his intensity to his workplace.

“I might not look it but I’m the exact same way. I’ve got a very competitive spirit but it would only be on a golf course. Like I’ll let you win in a game of pool. I don’t care about that,” he said.

“Tiger has just got a more competitive spirit, period. Like he’ll want to beat you at cards. He’ll want to beat you at anything you’re playing him against,” McIlroy said. “I’m a little bit different in that way in that golf is my vehicle to be competitive in something in life, and that’s why I sort of put everything into that.”

Woods was McIlroy’s boyhood hero, and while the younger player’s career appears to be on an upward trajectory as the fallen icon has not won a major since the 2008 U.S. Open, the nine-time PGA Tour winner said he was not ready to take the baton.

“I’m just going to keep playing my golf and play as good as I can, and I’ll see where that takes me. But I don’t think any torch has been passed and I don’t think any torch will ever be passed because I never think of myself in that way,” McIlroy said. “I see myself as a golfer on the PGA Tour that wants to win tournaments and wants to be the best that he can be, and I don’t see the need for me to carry any sort of torch. I just want to win golf tournaments.”

In the meantime, since taking the Ice Bucket Challenge with Woods, the newly single and extremely stacked McIlroy apparently borrowed the form-fitting, Gary Player-like threads Tiger wore on Fallon to help one of those he dared to take the plunge.

Meghan Markle carried out her obligation on Wednesday, with McIlroy dumping the chilly liquid out of a cooler and fueling gossip that the “Suits” actor was the latest in a series of models with whom he may be keeping time (h/t Golf News Net).