Tiger Woods and son to play alongside Thomases at PNC

Tiger Woods will be surrounded by some familiar faces when he makes his return to competition Saturday for the first round of the PNC Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. In addition to playing alongside his 12-year-old son, Charlie, Woods drew a pairing with the tournament’s defending champions – 2021 PLAYERS champion Justin Thomas and Mike Thomas, Justin’s father and instructor. They will tee off at 12:18 p.m. in the day’s last group off the first tee. Neither the Woods team nor the Thomases were part of Thursday’s pro-am round at the PNC, but Woods, Justin Thomas and Mike Thomas all are scheduled to play on Friday. Woods hasn’t played in a PGA TOUR-sanctioned event since last year’s PNC, where Charlie impressed the crowds with some terrific play and ballstriking, highlighted by an eagle-3 he made off his own ball. Woods, a 15-time major champion and co-owner of the PGA TOUR’s victory mark with Sam Snead (82 wins), continues to slowly make his way back from a near-fatal, single-vehicle crash in Los Angeles in February. At his own Hero World Challenge two weeks ago in the Bahamas, Woods said at one point it was “50/50” that his right leg would be amputated. He said he wasn’t sure when he’d be ready to compete. The PNC, which uses a scramble format over 36 holes, seems a wise place to start. He announced Dec. 8 he would play. Thomas and Woods live not far from one another in Jupiter, Florida, and Thomas has come to develop a close relationship not only with Tiger, but also Charlie. Tiger has become something of a big brother to Justin, and he has played the same role for young Charlie. Justin and Charlie have a playful relationship and are known to do plenty of trash-talking to one another. “Probably the coolest thing for me is seeing him spend time with Charlie, just seeing how much he loves being around him on the golf course,” Thomas said recently on GOLF’s SubPar podcast. “He is such a good dad, and he loves being around his kids.” Team Thomas won last year’s PNC on the strength of a Sunday in which they made 15 birdies, shot 57, and beat Vijay and Qass Singh by a shot. The Thomases didn’t pass on an opportunity to use the win as an opportunity to needle Tiger and Charlie. “We had dinner with (Tiger) around the holidays and we both wore our belts over there,” Justin said at this year’s Sentry Tournament of Champions. “It was great. We would expect them to do the same thing. … Charlie just kind of laughed when he saw us and Tiger just said, ‘You know, well done, well played.’ And you know, it was all in good fun. But they fully expected it, I think.” Beating Tiger and Charlie was a thrill for Justin, but so was winning alongside his father, who has been his only coach. When he was younger, Thomas would say a highlight of his day would be playing nine holes at twilight with his dad, a longtime PGA club professional, after his dad closed up the shop in Kentucky. “I’m really excited. I’m so fortunate my dad and I get to do that,” Thomas said recently. “We don’t play near as much golf as we used to. In middle school and high school, we would pretty much finish up the day going out and playing nine holes at the end of the day, so for us to not only play golf together but to play in a tournament like a father-son, it’s really, really special.”

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