The moment a boy officially becomes a man is up for debate, but for many, it’s when they finally can one-up their dad. Whether it be in an arm wrestling contest, a one-on-one basketball game in the driveway, or a round of golf, eventually, young men can finally topple their fathers in something meaningful, which often leaves the dad both happy, with the evolution of their child, and sad, in that, they lost to their kid.
That moment may have finally arrived for Tiger Woods and his 15-year-old son, Charlie. The elder Woods has a major championship for every year of Charlie’s life, but Charlie finally one-upped his old man on the course, which Tiger Woods revealed on Friday.
The admission came after a reporter said that Luke Leonard, who is the son of two-time major winner Justin Leonard and who also attends the same high school as Charlie, revealed on The Golf Channel that he was playing with the Woods when he saw Charlie win. So, there’s a witness to the occasion, even though Tiger Woods didn’t reveal more details about losing to his son.
While the Woods are frequent opponents of each other outside of official competitions, they are teammates this weekend at the PNC Championship. It is also known as the Father/Son Challenge, and as the moniker suggests, golf pros like Tiger Woods and Justin Leonard get to team with their sons, such as Charlie and Luke.
This is the fifth time that the Woods are teaming up for the 36-hole event, held at Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. They’ve yet to win the tournament, in which 20 pairs of teams play a scramble format, though they did finish as runner-up to John Daly and his son in 2021. Not only does Tiger Woods get a chance to play with his son, but he simply gets the opportunity to play, period. He underwent yet another back surgery in September, his sixth known back operation, and that forced him to withdraw from a tournament he hosts, the Hero World Challenge, just two weeks ago.
“That was one of the reasons why I had the surgery done earlier, so hopefully, I could give myself the best chance to be with Charlie and play,” Tiger Woods stated. “I’m not competitive right now, but I just want to be able to have the experience again. This has always been one of the bigger highlights of the year for us as a family, and now we get to have that moment together again.”
The PNC Championship is sanctioned by the PGA Tour, but it’s not an official event, doesn’t carry any FedEx Cup points and won’t go on the victors’ official wins list. However, it is still a golf tournament, and it’s just the sixth that Tiger Woods has played in 2024. Of 20 possible rounds over the previous five, he only completed 11 of them and played in all four rounds in just one tournament this year. That came at the Masters, where he shot 16-over-par with a score of 304, which is the worst 72-hole score of his career.
The younger Woods is making his own name in the golfing world and went through U.S. Open qualifying earlier this year. He also qualified for the U.S. Junior Amateur, a tournament that Tiger won three times at ages 15, 16, and 17. While Charlie didn’t fare as well as he shot 22-over-par through two rounds and missed the cut, he still has a bright future in the sport, and beating his famous father—even if it was over nine holes—is proof of just that.
Tiger Woods, however, doesn’t want himself to be used as a measuring stick for Charlie. The world is much different now than it was when he was that same age in the early 1990s, as Charlie has to deal with this age of social media, which could add unnecessary pressure to his burgeoning golf journey.
“I always encourage it, for him to carve his own name, carve his own path and have his own journey,” Tiger Woods said. “I think he’s doing a great job. In this day and age where everyone is basically media, with all the phones, being constantly filmed and constantly people watching, that’s just part of his generation, and that’s part of the world that he has to maneuver through.”
Fortunately, for Tiger Woods’ sake, there were no phones able to capture the time his 15-year-old son finally beat him in a round.
