ORLANDO, Fla. — Tiger Woods turns 49 at the end of the month and he has one pressing goal that relates to his golf. He wants to prolong that inevitable day when his son beats him over 18 holes.
They will be playing with — not against — each other this week for the fifth straight year at the PNC Championship, a 36-hole tournament so meaningful to them and everyone else in the field that Woods was determined to play for the first time since a sixth back surgery in September.
Word got out, however, that 15-year-old Charlie finally beat his 15-time major champion dad.
“He beat me for nine holes,” Woods said, an important clarification to him. “He has yet to beat me for 18 holes. That day is coming. I’m just prolonging it as long as I possibly can.”
As for the details, Woods talked about the typical banter between them and how much fun they have. It was clear he was not going to share the hole-by-hole of the loss.
Winning is a goal, but not the priority, at the PNC Championship. It’s a happy end of the year for all 20 teams at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club Orlando, an event that pairs the winners of majors or The Players Championship with a family member.
Woods played five tournaments this year and completed only one of them, making the cut at the Masters for a record 24th consecutive year. He had to play 23 holes on Friday at Augusta National in a raging wind, posting a 72 for his best round of the year. He followed that with an 82, an example of ups and downs from a player whose body has been wracked with injury.
“I’m not going to feel what I’m used to feeling,” Woods said. “The recovery has gotten to be the hardest part. But over the course of rounds, weeks, months, it gets harder.”
He missed the cut in the next three majors and then had surgery on his lower back in September to alleviate some of the spasms he had been feeling. The timing of the surgery was related to the PNC Championship.
Woods chose not to play the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas two weeks ago, saying he wasn’t competitively sharp enough to handle Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay and Justin Thomas among a 20-man field of players from the top 40 in the world.
This might as well be his fifth major because he plays with his son.
“That was one of the reasons why I had the surgery done earlier, so that hopefully I could give myself the best chance to be with Charlie and be able to play,” Woods said. “I’m not competitive right now, but I just want to be able to have the experience again. This has always been one of the bigger highlights of the year for us as a family, and now we get to have that moment together again.”
The surgery was on his back, but Woods said his right leg, which was mangled in a February 2021 car crash outside Los Angeles, remains the biggest physical obstacle.
Even so, he chose to walk the pro-am on Friday instead of riding a cart, which is allowed for players because the tournament is co-sanctioned by the PGA Tour Champions.
Team Woods has yet to win since they began playing in 2020. They finished second the following year by two shots to John Daly and his college son, when Charlie was 12. He is adding inches to his height every year, filling out and pounding the golf ball. Woods plans to rely on his son’s tee shots in the scramble format.
They will play the opening round Saturday with Justin Leonard and son Luke, who goes to The Benjamin School in North Palm Beach with Charlie and is going to Villanova next year.
Charlie Woods went through U.S. Open qualifying for the first time this year and failed to advance out of the first stage. He qualified for the U.S. Junior Amateur at Oakland Hills but didn’t come close to making it to match play.
Woods appreciated that his son is under a spotlight few others his age face.
“I was always reminding him, ‘Just be you.’ Charlie is Charlie. Yes, he’s my son. He’s going to have my last name and it’s going to be part of his core. But I just want him to be just himself and be his own person. That’s what we can only do,” Woods said.
“I always encourage it, for him to carve his own name, carve his own path and have his own journey,” he said. “I think he’s doing a great job. In this day and age where everyone is basically media, with all the phones, being constantly filmed and constantly people watching, that’s just part of his generation, and that’s part of the world that he has to maneuver through.”