Approaching his 45th birthday, it’s reasonable to wonder: What’s fueling Tiger now?
It’s not the titans of the game. Not that long-ago desire to eclipse Jack Nicklaus’ 18 majors, or his recent pursuit of Sam Snead’s 82 PGA Tour titles.
It’s not this latest generation of stars. Not keeping pace with Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy or Justin Thomas.
No, it sure looks like it’s the sixth-grader Woods partnered with at the PNC Championship, the whiz kid with the swagger and the mop top with whom he shared a few priceless moments over the weekend, leaving us as viewers with the same impression: Awwwww, he’s a mini-me.
“These are memories that we’re gonna have for our entire lives,” Woods said. “It was pure golf, just he and I. We just get into our own little world.”
Make no mistake, this isn’t like the familial storyline surrounding another sports mega-star, LeBron James. LeBron is set to turn 36 next week but remains a dominant force, not some aging warrior who’s hanging around for a few too many years so he can someday hoop in the NBA with his 16-year-old son, Bronny.
Tiger is in his mid-40s, with a body that some mornings feels three decades older. Son Charlie is 11, with the difficult teenage years to come, with his own interests, dreams and ambitions still to pursue. Even if Charlie becomes an elite prospect and takes the golf world by storm (if he hasn’t already, as a trending topic on Twitter), then they’ll almost surely never cross paths on Tour.
But Charlie’s deep passion for the sport should keep Tiger active and engaged into the twilight of his career, even if his tournament results continue to diminish, as they did in 2020. Charlie will now be a reliable companion – pushing, cajoling, needling.
Tiger won’t want to let him down.
It was just three years ago, on the eve of another comeback from injury, when Tiger spoke of a desire to be known by his kids as more than just a “YouTube golfer.” (Apparently, Charlie has watched hours of footage: His mannerisms, from his club twirls to his miffed reactions to his wry smile, were carbon copies.) From Tiger’s perspective, his kids were too young to appreciate how dominant and larger-than-life he was; Charlie was 4 when Tiger had won his most recent tournament, in 2013. All they knew was that decades of golf had caused their father unimaginable pain, forcing him to the couch and to his bed, spiraling him into such a dark place that he was arrested in 2017 after police found him slumped over the steering wheel of his Mercedes, five painkillers coursing through his system. Tiger doesn’t often speak anecdotally, but perhaps the saddest story he’s ever told was how daughter Sam once found him face down in the backyard, unable to get up, his back seizing.
That’s what made Tiger’s resurgence in 2018 so thrilling, and why that summer he electrified crowds from Tampa to D.C. to St. Louis. It was so unexpected, not just for his legion of fans, but also for Tiger and his own family. His kids were on-hand for the close call at Carnoustie, when he took the lead heading into the back nine but stumbled coming home. That loss, for the first time, crushed them. As he told them afterward: “Hopefully you’re proud of your pops for trying as hard as I did.”
A few months later, Tiger won for the first time in five years, another YouTube highlight, but his kids were watching back home in South Florida. They flew to Georgia before the final round of the 2019 Masters, and at Augusta National they got a proper experience: the teeming crowd, the perfect shots, the moment of euphoria on 18. That became their moment too, wrapped in bear hugs behind the final green.
“I just can’t say enough how much that meant to me throughout my struggles when I really just had a hard time moving around, just their infectiousness of happiness,” Tiger said that day. “To have them there, and then now to have them see their pops win, just like my pops saw me win here, it’s pretty special.”
So special that it appears something changed in Charlie that afternoon, or perhaps on the flight home, when he wrestled with his sister over who could wear the green jacket. “It was casual before then,” Tiger’s caddie, Joe LaCava, told the New York Times of Charlie’s interest in the sport. “Now it’s intense – in a good way.”
Now it’s picking dad’s brain, peppering him with smart questions, expanding his own golf IQ but also challenging the way Tiger views his current game.
Now it’s a chirpy putting contest with Thomas, or golf’s version of H.O.R.S.E. in the backyard practice area.
Now it’s posting scores at Medalist and at local junior events and, for the first time, in a nationally televised tournament in Orlando.
Tiger admittedly didn’t practice much after last month’s Masters, focusing more on Charlie’s preparations, but it’s easy to imagine how their collective performance will only serve as motivation. On the flight home Charlie would buzz about the experience, but if he’s anything like his old man, he’d also be stewing over some of the shots they didn’t quite execute. Or the putts they missed. Or the final leaderboard that saw them five shots adrift. WE can do better.
So they’ll get back after it together, lost in their own little world, knowing the highlight reel on YouTube isn’t finished yet.