Tiger Woods wasn’t watching as his son, Charlie, hit his tee shot on the par-3 fourth hole on Sunday at the PNC Championship, the annual family team event.
The broadcast said he was taking a break when he heard the roar of the crowd as his 15-year-old son’s tee shot went in for his first-ever hole-in-one.
Charlie himself was in disbelief as his dad met him for a huge hug and a playful shove after the wild moment the duo will never forget.
“It was a perfect 7-iron so I just kind of hit it. Just 175 [yards], a little down off the left, little cut seven,” Charlie told Golf Channel after the hole-in-one.
“It was awesome. I didn’t think it went in. I don’t believe anybody until I go up there and see it.”
At the time, Team Woods was in the lead at the PNC Championship, taking place at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando.
Tiger, 48, had another back surgery in September, his sixth overall, with the hope he could be healthy enough to partake in this weekend’s event with his son and daughter Sam, who is caddying for her dad for the second straight year.
“That was one of the reasons why I had the surgery done earlier, so that hopefully I could give myself the best chance to be with Charlie and be able to play,” Woods told reporters on Friday. “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 spotlight on Charlie will continue to grow as he marches closer to a professional career; he failed to advance out of a local U.S. Open qualifier in April, finishing 61st. The top five finishers in local qualifiers advance to one of 13 36-hole qualifiers.
“I was always reminding him, ‘Just be you.’ Charlie is Charlie,” Tiger said Friday. “Yes, he’s my son. He’s going to have my last name, and it’s going to be part of his core. But I just want him to be just himself and be his own person. That’s what we can only do.
“I always encourage it, for him to carve his own name, carve his own path and have his own journey,” he added. “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.”
Elsewhere at the PNC Championship, Padraig Harrington’s son, Paddy, made his own hole-in-one on the par-3 eighth.