Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy chat up Bill Clinton

NORTON, Mass. -- Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy can’t get enough of Bubba -- Clinton, that is.

Woods, on the sidelines for this week’s second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, enjoyed a tête-à-tête Wednesday night in Boston with the former president during a Deutsche Bank Championship pro-am welcome party.

What No. 42 and the former No. 1 chatted about remains a state secret, but some in golf circles wondered if there could be a quid pro quo involved. With everybody’s favorite ex-prez bringing in the muscle to support Woods’ foundation, the primary beneficiary of the DBC, might a healthy Tiger return the favor and make a January tee time at Clinton’s golf tourney of choice, the Humana Challenge?

Woods has never played in the PGA Tour event, the former Bob Hope Classic, that Clinton helped save from extinction in 2012 and whose official name includes “...in partnership with the Clinton Foundation.” The 14-time major champion with a bad back won’t play in any competition until December at the earliest.

After swinging with obvious pain and missing the cut at the PGA Championship earlier this month -- following a brief, miserable 2014 season in which he missed three cuts in seven tour contests -- Woods said he would not tee it up again until his foundation’s World Challenge and planned a tour return next year. Perhaps in Boston Wednesday night, the two rock stars were planning a “Welcome Back, Tiger” party at La Quinta early next year.

Clinton may have also been drumming up interest in the Humana when he spent a few hours with Tiger’s Nike stablemate, world No. 1 Rory McIlroy, a couple days earlier.

The duo was supposed to play golf that morning but “he had to do something with Hillary,” McIlroy said during a press conference after Thursday’s DBC pro-am, so they ended up doing lunch instead. Rory was entranced and said the time just flew by.

“The stories that he can tell and the life experiences that he’s had, it’s just a great man to listen to,” McIlroy said. “And lunches with him -- you look at your watch and you’ve not realized that you’ve been sitting there for three hours, chatting about any topic you want in the world. He has enough knowledge to know everything about it.”

Clinton, like just about every other past and current POTUS, is a huge fan of the game McIlroy plays, so golf was definitely part of the conversation, but there was so much more.

“We talked about a lot of other stuff. He was telling interesting stories when he was in office and dealing with different leaders from certain countries. It’s really interesting and it’s almost like you get a lifetime of sort of education on that stuff that you didn’t already know,” McIlroy said. “It’s obviously an honor for me to be in a position where I’m able to do things like that. So it was a cool afternoon. I really enjoyed it.”

As with Woods, an appearance at the Humana would also be a first for McIlroy, who has fostered a social media relationship with the tournament host. George W. Bush’s predecessor tweeted McIlroy a year ago, assuring his young pal he was working on his putting.