December – Golfing Agency

Tiger Woods will team with son for 2022 PNC Championship as 15-time major winner adds to December schedule

detlef32 — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 18:39:38 +0000

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After playing just nine rounds over the first 11 months of 2022, Tiger Woods is poised to play seven more in the next three weeks. Woods has officially committed to play the PNC Championship Dec. 16-17 in Orlando with his son, Charlie. This marks the end of a three-week stretch in which Tiger will have played the Hero World Challenge (which his foundation hosts), The Match (alongside Rory McIlroy and against Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas) and finally the PNC.

Tiger and Charlie finished second in 2021 at the PNC Championship behind John Daly and his son, John II, despite a scorching second nine from the Woods’ on the second day of the two-round event. It was an exhibition tournament that somehow turned into one of the most fun days of the golf year.

It’s true that Woods’ next seven rounds won’t be played with anything near the intensity of his last nine — four at the Masters, three at the PGA Championship and two at the Open Championship at St. Andrews — but it’s still a2 bit surprising to see Woods tee it up this often during golf’s quietest season. Each event makes sense in a vacuum, but on the whole it’s a lot of golf for somebody who is still recovering from a nearly severed leg in a car wreck at the beginning of 2021.

It should also be encouraging for those who want to see a lot of Woods in 2023. We will speculate about his schedule at a later date — perhaps after seeing how he looks in these three events — but it’s difficult to envision Woods, barring a setback, playing three exhibitions at the end of 2022 and then sitting out the biggest events of the competitive golf year in 2023. At the very least, Woods will very likely play in at least if not all four of the major championships.

That’s then, though, and this is now. In the dark of the (admittedly) short golf offseason, Tiger will be a massive draw and a ton of fun to watch, perhaps most of all at the PNC Championship. Because while seeing him at the Hero alongside Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler and at The Match with McIlroy, Thomas and Spieth will be great, watching his son emulate a dad (who is also the best to ever do it) at this event for the third year in a row will probably be the most joyful of them all.

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Tiger Woods commits to 2022 Hero World Challenge, his second of three potential December events

detlef32 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 20:16:23 +0000

After playing just nine rounds over the first 10 months of 2022, Tiger Woods is prepared to nearly match that over the next month and a half. Woods announced Wednesday that he will play the self-hosted Hero World Challenge from Dec. 1-4 in the Bahamas.

Woods joins a field he recruited, which includes Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland, Jordan Spieth, Hideki Matsuyama and Tom Kim. Most of the top 20 golfers in the world will be in attendance for this four-round event at Albany Golf Course, and while it is not considered an official PGA Tour event, the Hero World Challenge does receive Official World Golf Rankings points. (Tiger could use a few of those after missing so much time over the last two years.)

In addition to the Hero World Challenge, Tiger will tee it up on Dec. 10 at the seventh edition of The Match alongside Rory McIlroy. Those two will square off against Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas in a 12-hole exhibition at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Florida.

Additionally, Woods is expected to play alongside his son, Charlie, at the PNC Championship on Dec. 17-18. Though he has not officially committed to the PNC, this will likely be the third consecutive year he and Charlie would play in that event. If Woods commits to the PNC, we will see him play seven rounds over 18 days in December after he was on the course for just nine rounds over the first 334 days of 2022.

Woods finished 47th at the Masters then withdrew after the third round of the PGA Championship and missed the cut altogether at The Open in July.

Tiger has not played the Hero World Challenge since 2019 when he finished fourth, four back of winner Henrik Stenson. It is expected that he will ride in a cart for The Match and the PNC (if he plays), but it’s unknown whether he will walk or ride in a cart for the Hero World Challenge.

While the immediacy of Woods’ golf ambitions is encouraging for what his 2023 schedule will look like, don’t expect him to show up at many more events beyond the major championships, if he even plays all four of those. It was at the Hero World Challenge last year that Tiger advised everyone to be conservative about projecting his playing schedule going forward.

“I don’t foresee this leg ever being what it used to be, hence, I’ll never have the back what it used to be, and clock’s ticking,” said Woods. “I’m getting older. I’m not getting any younger. All that combined means that a full schedule and a full practice schedule and the recovery that it would take to do that — no, I don’t have any desire to do that. But to ramp up for a few events a year … as Mr. [Ben] Hogan did — he did a pretty good job of it, and there’s no reason that I can’t do that and feel ready.”

We’ll see how many events is “a few events a year,” but there’s certainly reason for optimism with Woods filling up his December with golf.

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