Over the last several years, Tiger Woods has morphed from 15-time major champion to Golf Dad. He’s still the former, but the latter takes up more of his time.
Woods and his son, Charlie, are the most famous pairing at this weekend’s PNC Championship in Orlando. They finished second last year and enter this one a little nicked up but still among the favorites.
The pro-am was on Friday, and Woods was in full dad mode. Need evidence? This picture:
But we also got some insight into Woods, the teacher. Cameras caught a conversation between Tiger and Charlie.
“I mean, look at this, it’s a perfect, perfect backswing,” said Tiger, showing Charlie the video he just recorded on his phone.
“Really?”
“Yes,” Tiger said. “So that’s the feel. And obviously, all this is different.”
They look at Charlie on the downswing.
“That’s almost on top of it,” Tiger said. “You’ve never been there.”
Charlie mentioned he was cutting and slicing the ball and seemed frustrated, but Tiger could see the positive signs.
“No, that’s the plane,” he said. “That’s exactly how it should have been. You know, eventually, when you get feeling a little better, I want to have that, with a draw.”
Check out the video below.
Woods is relishing this kind of stuff. He admitted on Friday there have been several frustrating, injury-plagued years when his kids were growing up. Battling back and knee issues, Woods couldn’t practice or play with them in the backyard as much as he wished.
“I wasn’t able to do any of that because most of their childhood my back was bad,” he said. “But now they’re at an age where they understand it, but we still have fun in different ways. And we compete, nonstop in everything we do, and I love it.”
Tiger said Charlie’s grown the most since last year by being able to identify and fix his own swing issues when his dad isn’t around.
“One of the reasons why I always tell him why we’re doing what we’re doing, so that he can retrace the steps,” Tiger said. “And when he gets a little off, now he knows what to go back to and understand that, ‘OK, if I hit that shot, it’s that pattern, this is the fix.’ And you’ve got to be able to do that when you playing tournament golf. You have to understand in tournament golf you’ve got to make a switch on the fly and trust it.
“And that’s where I’ve seen the biggest growth when I’ve caddied for him in events or I’ve watched him play. I can see him rehearsing shots, he’s trying to get out of that pattern, he feels this. And I can just see it. And then we talk it and we discuss it, and then we move on and drop it and go do something else.”
Team Woods tees off at 12:02 p.m. ET on Saturday. You can stream the action via Peacock from 1-2 p.m., and the NBC broadcast begins at 2 p.m.