Tiger and Charlie Woods, runners-up in last year’s PNC Championship, will be back for another try at the title.
Team Woods went on a record-setting birdie run in the final round of last year’s PNC but came up just short of catching the team of John Daly and his son, John II, who plays collegiate golf at the University of Arkansas.
The tournament, which pairs a major winner with his or her parent or child, will be played Dec. 17-18 at Ritz Carlton Golf Club in Orlando. Tiger announced Friday that he and his son, Charlie, would once again compete in the scramble event, joining Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas among the headliners in this year’s field.
“We have been looking forward to this week all year and we can’t wait to team up together for our third PNC Championship,” Tiger said in a statement. “This is such a special opportunity as a dad to get to compete with my son against so many golfing greats and their family members. It is going to be a very special week and I know that Charlie and I will have a blast.”
Also in this year’s field are the defending champion Dalys and World Golf Hall of Famers Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer, Mark O’Meara, Gary Player, Nick Price, Vijay Singh, Annika Sorenstam and Lee Trevino. Nelly Korda, the No. 1 player in the Rolex Rankings, also is in the field.
The PNC will mark Tiger’s third consecutive week of competition. He will be playing his Hero World Challenge in The Bahamas in the first week of December and then the latest iteration of Capital One’s The Match, where he paired with Rory McIlroy to take on Spieth and Thomas, on Dec. 10 in Florida.
Tiger made an unexpected return to competitive golf at this year’s majors, making the cut at both the Masters and PGA Championship and bidding an emotional goodbye to St. Andrews. While Tiger shocked the golf world with his 1-under 71 in the opening round of the Masters, his first official competition since his Southern California car accident, it also was apparent that the rigors of playing golf and walking courses are difficult for his surgically-repaired right leg.
Woods had to withdraw after the third round of the PGA Championship and skipped the U.S. Open to ensure he could return to St. Andrews, where he twice won The Open. The Hero was Woods’ first competitive appearance since St. Andrews.
“Tiger is just steadily finding ways to get a little bit more stability in his leg,” his good friend and Golf Channel commentator, Begay, said in a recent appearance on SiriusXM.