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 an event 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 a hole-by-hole account 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 past major champions of winners of 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 score of the year. He followed that with an 82, an inconsistent round that mirrored the ups and downs of a golfer 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 year’s final three majors, 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 Official World Golf Ranking. He was present as the host.
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 near Los Angeles, remains the biggest physical obstacle.
Even so, he chose to walk during 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 Tiger and Charlie began playing in 2020. They finished second the following year by two shots to John Daly and his college-aged son when Charlie was 12. The younger Woods is adding inches to his height every year, filling out and pounding the golf ball. Tiger 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 University next year.
Charlie 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 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. 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.”
Youth movement for LIV Golf League
The LIV Golf League is looking younger as it adds new players to the team rosters, the most recent Friday when Cleeks GC announced it was signing Fredrik Kjetterup of Denmark, who finished among the top 10 in the PGA Tour University ranking while competing for Florida State.
The Iron Heads GC two weeks ago signed 22-year-old Yubin Jang, the Korean Tour’s player of the year in 2024 after winning twice and finishing runner-up five times.
“He’s going to be the next best Korean golfer,” said Kevin Na, the lead player of Iron Heads. “That’s how much I believe in him. And I told him that, too.”
They are the only two players to have signed with the Saudi-backed organization in the month of what LIV refers to as free agency. Max Lee of Taiwan won the promotions event to also earn a spot.
Caleb Surratt was No. 10 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking when the 19-year-old University of Tennessee player joined LIV at the start of this year. He finished 41st in the standings, his best finish a tie for 12th. He made just more than $2.7 million in 2024.
PGA Tour University was created to give college seniors a path to the PGA Tour. Kjetterup would have had access to the developmental Korn Ferry Tour, and he was also exempt into the final stage of Q-school. Instead, he withdrew and joined LIV.
Jang also withdrew from the final stage of Q-school and joined LIV.
Kjetterup won three times on the PGA Tour Americas in Canada after leaving Florida State. He earned $137,419 in nine starts. Joining LIV gives him access to $20 million tournaments, 54 holes with no cuts, with the top prize at $4 million and last place paying $50,000.
LIV also is affiliated with the Asian Tour, and its International Series events have $2 million purses. But the 24-year-old Dane would have to go through qualifying for the U.S. Open and British Open, or lead the Asian Tour to be considered for the PGA Championship. He qualified for the U.S. Open this year and missed the cut.
Martin Kaymer, captain of the Cleeks, told British website Bunkered he believes LIV could have a pathway to the majors down the road.
“What I’ve heard from the league is that it looks pretty good. Hopefully next year we have some kind of way of qualifying for majors,” said Kaymer, a 39-year-old from Germany who won the 2010 PGA Championship and the 2014 U.S. Open. “We cannot say for sure this will happen. But he was fine with that.”
Kjetterup replaces Kalle Samooja, who was relegated from LIV after failing to finish among the top 44 in the standings of the 54-player league. No one else has been announced signing with LIV, where rosters must be set before the season starts in February.
PGA of America’s new CEO a familiar name
Derek Sprague has been selected as the next CEO at the PGA of America, the first time a club professional has been chosen to lead the organization in nearly 20 years.
Sprague, who spent 25 years at his hometown Malone Golf Club in New York, also becomes the first CEO to have served as PGA president. He takes over for Seth Waugh, the former Deutsche Bank Americas CEO who took over in 2018 until announcing his retirement earlier this year.
“To have a leader at the helm who knows every detail of the association and what it means to be a PGA of America Member will enable our association to succeed far into the future,” Don Rea Jr., president of the PGA of America, said in a release.
Sprague, a PGA of America member since 1993, most recently was the general manager at TPC Sawgrass. He was hired in 2018 after working at Liberty National in New Jersey, which hosted the Presidents Cup during his tenure.
In Sprague’s final year of a two-year term as PGA president, Jimmy Walker won the 2016 PGA Championship after a rain-soaked weekend that nearly carried over to Monday. Presenting the Wanamaker Trophy was his final act as president.
But his roots were in New York’s upstate region, where as the general manager and director of golf at Malone he ran every aspect of the club.
Sprague takes over at a time when golf is going through a big turnover in leadership. Martin Slumbers has retired as CEO of the R&A. Mollie Marcoux Samaan recently stepped down as commissioner of the LPGA. Guy Kinnings recently completed his first year as CEO of the Europe-based DP World Tour. And PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced this week a search for a new position of CEO at the commercial PGA Tour Enterprises.
The PGA of America announced earlier this week it would pay its Ryder Cup players for the first time, a combination of $300,000 earmarked for charity and a $200,000 stipend.
“Throughout my career I have made it a priority to bring people together around a common cause,” Sprague said in a statement announcing his hire. “At a time of profound change in golf, there is also great opportunity for our association and our members.
“It is my task, alongside the officers and board, to elevate the profession of our more than 30,000 PGA of America golf professionals while ensuring the health of the association and its relationships within our industry.”
Jim Awtrey, the former Oklahoma golf coach and head professional at various Oklahoma golf clubs, was the first CEO of the PGA of America in 1993. He left in 2005 and was succeeded by broadcast executive Joe Steranka. He was followed by Pete Bevacqua — a USGA business officer who left to join NBC and now is athletic director at the University of Notre Dame — and then Waugh.
Kerry Haigh, the chief championships officer for the PGA of America, had been acting as interim CEO since Waugh’s retirement in June.