ORLANDO, Fla. — Hello, friends, and welcome to my favorite golf weekend of the year: the PNC Championship! I’ll be on-site all weekend here at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club to tell you all about the best parent-child moments from this event. I drove from Palm Beach to Orlando on Friday morning and made it to the course in time to follow Tiger‘s second nine. This is the first year that Tiger and Charlie Woods played in separate pro-am groups, so while I didn’t see too many father-son interactions, I know there will be plenty over the weekend. Team Woods will be teeing it up alongside Team Leonard on Saturday morning, and Tiger and Justin Leonard aren’t the only ones in that group used to playing together. Charlie Woods and Leonard’s son, Luke, are high school golf teammates.
Moments like these remind me just how happy I am to have grown up in Rhode Island, because there is no chance I would have made a high school golf team in Florida. There’s so much talent! OK, let’s get into it.
The best spot at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club (in my humble opinion) is between the 9th green and the 10th tee box. There’s a small path for players, caddies and media to cut through, and there’s always a wait on the tee box. While a back-up on a tee box is often seen as a negative thing, it’s a great thing here at the PNC Championship. When groups overlap, players and their families get to interact. Today, Petr Korda, Tiger and Charlie Woods were all by the same tee for a few minutes. This is also the very spot where players are given lunch. The chicken tenders and fries are always a hot commodity here at the PNC Championship.
It was here that I met up with Tiger’s group, and I immediately noticed that he was the only person in his group not using a cart. And trust me, I know Tiger fans can be accused of overhyping when it comes to talking about him, but he looked spectacular out there and I mean it. He was walking with intention, and that intention was to get to the next shot. If you’ve seen Tiger tee it up over the past few years, he would sometimes start to limp toward the end of the round and look like he was avoiding stepping down incorrectly. Not today, folks.