Photos: THE CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES, Round 3

Ian Poulter and Graeme McDowell are the last players on the LIV tour to have sponsors back away from them as MasterCard said it is pausing its endorsement deals with the two.

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Odysseus and Telemachus; Marlin and Nemo; Jellybean and Kobe Bryant. History, real and imagined, is so thick with fathers and sons that the temptation is to get carried away at the PNC Championship, where Tiger and Charlie Woods will be the headliners for the third straight year at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando. The swings! The mannerisms! The outfits! Hang on, though. Slow down. Tiger is just a man, and a hobbled one, at that. Charlie is just 13. “I want him to enjoy whatever he’s doing,” Woods said in their first joint interview at the Notah Begay III Junior Golf National Championship in Kinder, Louisiana. And there it is, the through line to which all else must adhere. Joy. “Hey, Charlie, you gotta practice this,” Lee Trevino said last year while giving Team Woods an impromptu clinic on the PNC’s driving range. Trevino and Woods disagreed on who was the best-ever ball-striker, each citing the other, and at one point Woods doubled over laughing. Tiger thinks a lot about fatherhood these days. Much of his induction speech into the World Golf Hall of Fame in March recalled how he snuck onto courses with his dad Earl to skirt the age-limit restrictions, and how Earl and Kultida took out a second mortgage so Tiger could travel the country to play American Junior Golf Association events. His hopes this week? To feel well enough to play. That Charlie does well. It’s different for Charlie. He wants to beat his friend Justin Thomas, who will play with his dad, Mike, who coaches Charlie and with whom Justin won the PNC Championship in 2020. Oh, and Tiger and Charlie also wouldn’t mind winning. Last year Team Woods made 11 straight birdies in the final round, finishing second to John Daly and John II. It was enjoyable for all. “The competitive juices, they are never going to go away,” Tiger said then. “This is my environment. This is what I’ve done my entire life. I’m just so thankful to be able to have this opportunity to do it again.” They’ll do it again this weekend with the scramble format Saturday and Sunday. And we’ll watch. Old and Young Tom Morris. Jack and Gary Nicklaus. Craig and Kevin Stadler. Dave Stockton and Dave Stockton, Jr. Johnny and Andy Miller. Al and Brent Geiberger. Bill and Jay Haas. We warm to these stories, the perks (top instruction, optimized gear), challenges (unfair expectations, incessant scrutiny), and debate (nature versus nurture, DNA versus drive) always the same but not. Has any player ever labored under a shadow like the one cast by Tiger Woods? The PNC is where we gather for all of it. Charlie may have to carry Team Woods, what with Tiger battling plantar fasciitis in his right foot. He was rusty in The Match last week as he and FedExCup champ Rory McIlroy fell to the super-duo of Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas. “Play hard, partner,” Woods said. The 12-hole exhibition under the lights came a month after Charlie shot 72-69-71 for a 1-under total of 212 as he finished 11th in Louisiana. Tiger caddied. “Get the misses tighter,” Charlie said of his golf goals. “Practice more. Just have fun.” And would Tiger be a first-ballot Hall of Famer as a caddie? “He forgot my putter a few times,” Charlie said. “That’s about it.” Tiger didn’t miss much when enjoyment meant world domination. At his Hall of Fame speech, the winner of 82 PGA TOUR titles, 15 majors, said he remains conflicted about the famous Presidents Cup tie as darkness fell on South Africa … nearly two decades ago. But he’s softened as a dad even while indulging in the gamesmanship that his father visited upon him: the well-timed jangling of coins, ripping of Velcro, and/or clearing of throat. “If I can get into his head,” Tiger said of Charlie, “that means someone else can get into his head. It’s going to get to a point where I can’t get into his head, and then no one else can.” As a father, Tiger’s life is complicated by his celebrity. As a player it’s more complicated still. Intending to play in the recent Hero World Challenge, the tournament he hosts in the Bahamas, he took barefoot walks on sand, but it backfired, and he withdrew before the Hero even began. Officially, Woods played just three times in 2022, making the cut at the Masters, making the cut but withdrawing with leg pain at the PGA Championship, and missing the cut by nine at The Open Championship. It was at St. Andrews, he said, that his leg basically stopped working. He turned his attention to Charlie. During the Presidents Cup in September, when Woods could have been in the back room for U.S. Captain Davis Love III, he was carrying Charlie’s clubs as the kid posted a career-low 68 in a qualifier for the Begay III tournament. That, along with managing the delicate titration of rest and rehab, is Tiger Woods on the verge of his 47th birthday on Dec. 30. Out: Just Win, Baby. In: Dad life. No shame in that. At the PNC, where Team Daly will defend, Team Trevino will lead the field in Strokes Gained: Merriment, and Team Woods will no doubt dazzle in their Sunday red, it’s the entire point.

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HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – He is back on the PGA TOUR for the first time since November 2019, back among friends, back in golf which has “always been something that I love.” But when Morgan Hoffmann is asked why he’s back at age 32, the answer hits on all angles of a story that pulls at the heartstrings and introduces worlds of wellness and holistic health that are not the norm. Some players return to the Korn Ferry Tour or a former coach to rediscover secrets to the game; Hoffmann in 2018 spent time in Nepal and for most of the last two years has resided in Costa Rica “with a drive for health” his main goal. “It is,” said Luke Donald, who played a Tuesday practice round with Hoffmann at the RBC Heritage, “a fascinating story, isn’t it?” Indeed, it is. Diagnosed with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) in 2017, Hoffmann wanted answers and was told nothing could be done. He refused to accept that and explored worlds that were available to him, so long as he had an open mind. Oh, did he ever. Nepal is where he went to cleanse himself. But the move to Costa Rica for Hoffmann and his wife, Chelsea, to live among “healers” unlocked ways to treat his muscular dystrophy and to reassess so many other aspects of his world. Hoffmann appreciates that people who embrace Western medicine will perhaps be lost to know what he’s embarked upon, but part of his mission to return to the PGA TOUR is to educate people. He has started a foundation and wants to build a wellness center in Costa Rica. “A lot of people call some of the things that I’ve embarked upon as hallucinogenic, but the way I see them is so much different,” said Hoffmann. “I think it’s like a backdoor or side door to different dimensions or different planes. I don’t really have it down yet; I’m still questioning and trying to figure it all out.” His journey from the PGA TOUR to Nepal to Costa Rica and back to the PGA TOUR was recently reported thoroughly and beautifully in Golf Digest by Dan Rapaport. Hoffmann said he received “amazing positive feedback.” But he laughs, too, because his journey “can be deemed as crazy, but I think that’s kind of what most people see me as anyway.” Donald, who got to know Hoffmann years ago and has stayed in touch, finds nothing crazy about the story. Rather, Donald admires how in Hoffmann’s quest to cleanse himself physically and mentally, important lessons have been learned. “I think everyone is excited to see the progress he’s made with the knowledge he’s gained and the self-belief he has,” said Donald. “He’s content. We always think we need material to be happy, but I think he’s learned that less is more.” While Hoffmann reported that he felt fine, that he was back to working out diligently, that his pectorals “are coming back from the atrophy, which is huge and very, very exciting,” Donald saw that himself and came away impressed. “We didn’t talk too much about his illness,” said Donald. “But he has figured out how to heal his mental self. He looks good. It doesn’t look anything has been degenerative.” The golf component to Hoffmann’s story is one of long odds. Playing in the RBC Heritage on one of three remaining starts on a medical extension, he must accumulate 238.42 FedExCup points to maintain full status, which he held in his most recent full season as a pro, 2017-18. Now he’s spent the majority of the past two years living in Costa Rica, where hitting wedges on the beach with his dog, Yama, a 4-year-old Doberman, can’t be considered prime prep work for the PGA TOUR. Plus, Hoffmann reported that he broke his shoulder and two ribs in a motorcycle accident in his driveway in Costa Rica and “it’s been a really tough rehab.” Still, he’s been working on his physical fitness and most recently was at the Ohoopee Match Club in Cobbtown, Georgia, “for the last 10 days or so.” He reports that “the swing speed is getting back slowly” and that being at Harbour Town Golf Links brings him back to being a 12-year-old. That’s because Hoffmann, who grew up in Wyckoff, New Jersey, attended the IJGA Academy with Gary Gilchrist on Dafauskie Island, “and we would come over here to Harbour Town to play on weekends.” It’s a homecoming, of sorts, on two fronts. A return to an area where he spent some of his formative years and to a community of PGA TOUR brethren. Which invites the question: What does Morgan Hoffmann expect of himself this week? “Some smiles,” he said. “Some golf on a beautiful course. That’s really about it. I’ve been practicing hard and my game actually feels pretty solid. “My clubs are dialed in, so I feel good. I don’t really know. Obviously, you come to tournaments to win, and I’ve never done that before (on TOUR), so might as well shoot for the stars, right?” In a way, he already has done that in an inspiring way.

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