Tiger Woods and son get another crack at PNC Championship. Woods jokingly calls it the 5th major
On Friday, Woods was hanging out with his 14-year-old son Charlie. Their swings looked exactly alike, and Woods said the encouraging things in a way that only he could.
As a warm-up for the pro-am, they hit flop shots until Charlie hit a shot that was… well, let Woods explain.
“That’s the last one for now. “That was mean,” Woods said, adding one more word to the second part to make it stand out.
Woods looked good enough during the pro-am that he turned down the golf cart and walked 18 holes in strong wind. This doesn’t mean he is fully recovered, though.
“I thought my body was ready to do it,” Woods said. “Plus I feel better when I walk. It doesn’t really matter, we’re having so much fun that it doesn’t matter what I did.
The media asked Woods about his role on the PGA Tour board, but he didn’t want to answer.
The board is currently negotiating business deals with the Saudi investor in LIV Golf and a private investing group of important U.S. sports team owners.
Charles and Woods have played together for four years now. They were runners-up two years ago.
Woods says a lot of times that he is “having a blast,” but winning the Willie Parks Trophy would be one of the best things he has ever done.
He cares a lot about Charlie, and having daughter Sam out here with him would let him do that with Charlie while watching him grow up. It would represent a very, very different sort of win that might not go down in history books.
The question is how much work Charlie, whose high school squad won the state title in Class A, takes on.
He’s won so many majors that it’s hard to believe,” Justin Thomas said. He is not the “little crumb-snatcher” that Woods’ father used to call him when he was 11.
That was his first time playing in the PNC Championship in 2020. He is bigger and stronger, and his swing is faster and has more pop.
Charlie now plays from a set of tees one spot ahead of his dad. He will play at The Ritz-Carlton Club, which is 6,576 yards long.
Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, as well as Nelly Korda to the LPGA Tour all play from the same set of tees.
Thomas told him, “I can’t give him as much less because he’s almost going to beat me up.” The fact that he’s still only 14 years old but showing signs of growing up in his golf game is amazing. He’s also more inclined to learn and always open to new ideas.
Woods said, “People are always trying to get stuff out of us because our lives are so noisy.” As a parent, it’s my job to keep him safe from a lot of that noise.
At the same time, though, I want him to try to become his own man before he turns 18. Being a parent means making sure he has a safe place to learn, grow, and be free, but I also know that a lot of people are watching our lives and making noise.
Friday marks the start of the PNC Championship, which is Woods’s fourth event of the year. He made qualifying in the Masters but didn’t make it past the third round. Soon after, he had surgery to fuse his ankles together.
At the Hero World Challenge within the Bahamas two weeks ago, Woods came back earlier than he thought he would.
It was likely that he took advantage of the 18th place finish in the 20-man group as a warm-up for the big one, the PNC Championship.
“I was able to knock quite a bit of the rust out there at the Hero,” said Woods. “When I hit shots, my hands feel better because I had more control.”
Even more so today because of the strong wind, I was able to hit well with flighted shots, though I wasn’t as accurate as I hoped to be at Hero.
The weather is the main worry. It was windy enough to shake the trees, and it’s going to rain for two days. The starting times for the PGA Tour Champions have been moved up. At the PGA Tour Champions, everyone has to be in a cart.
Woods has watched his son grow up while caddieing for him. In fact, a single of those events was what gave him the go-ahead to play in the Bahamas.
The teacher taught the kid how to choose which shots to make, and the kid seems interested.
“And sometimes he fails to perceive it the way I do, which makes it fun,” said Woods. Charlie needs time and space to figure out golf and life on his own, but Woods said he also gives Charlie what he termed “guardrails.”