A lot has changed about golf since Tiger Woods and his son, Charlie, started playing the PNC Championship three years ago. A lot has changed with them, too.
Woods — at the time, one year removed from his improbable 2019 Masters victory — had his car accident at the beginning of 2021 and has undergone multiple surgeries since then, only playing intermittently throughout. Charlie has changed the most, though. Gone is the child who hit it as far as he possibly could and talked trash to Justin Thomas.
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“I can’t quite give him as much grief anymore because he’s close to beating me up,” said Thomas. “Yeah, it’s impressive from a golfer standpoint because he’s still, what, 14. He’s still a 14-year-old but maturing in the sense of his golf game, and he’s more willing to learn and he’s open to it at times, obviously.
“It’s cool. He won the state championship with the guys. That’s really cool, I think playing on the high school team has been very beneficial for him. And yeah, I’m just glad he keeps moving back tee markers. He’s leading the tournament in inches grown.”
Perhaps in yards gained off the tee, too.
“He’s one tee further back, so I guess he’s tee No. 2,” said Tiger. “He’s just one tee ahead of me, which is fine because he’s hitting it past me now. So we still have an advantage out there, but we both have to hit shots well at the same time.”
On Friday, Tiger said that he has enjoyed caddying for his son and also instructing him throughout. Giving him what shots to hit, how to hit them and what he’s thinking in certain situations.
“[The biggest change in his game from last year is] understanding how to hit shots,” said Tiger. “But I think his speed has gone dramatically up since last year. But I think that more than anything, it’s just the fact that he’s grown so fast. The aches and pains of growing, just teenage life.”
Tiger did give one eye-opening quote about how good Charlie’s swing is and how much speed he has off the tee, while also noting that he never has to push him because of how self-motivated his son is to get better.
“I sort of didn’t have the speed that he has at that age, but also, I didn’t have the equipment, either,” said Tiger. “The equipment is so different. We were just transitioning out of persimmon, so it’s a different era, but also, the different golf ball, too. We were able to do so much more with the golf ball. I would hit different shots and do more things with the golf ball because it just moved a lot more.”
Nobody knows how things will progress. Golf is a fickle and funny game. But Charlie’s progress is clearly extraordinary and that will almost certainly be on display when Tiger and Charlie tee it up alongside Thomas and his dad, Mike, on Saturday morning.
“He’s still growing,” said Tiger. You can see how much he’s grown from last year. It’s amazing how much he has grown, has changed, and it’s a moving target with him, right. He’s grown somewhere near 4 inches this year, so his swing has changed, it’s evolved, clubs have evolved. And we kept trying to adjust things, and it’s been a lot of fun. But it’s also challenging for him because each and every couple weeks, things change. He’s growing so fast.”