Tiger Woods will soon be back in action.
The 45-year-old golfer revealed on Wednesday that he will participate in the PNC Championship next weekend in Orlando, Fla., with his 12-year-old son, Charlie, his first golf tournament since nearly losing his leg in a car crash on Feb. 23 in California.
“Although it’s been a long and challenging year, I am very excited to close it out by competing in the @PNCchampionship with my son Charlie,” Woods tweeted.
“I’m playing as a Dad and couldn’t be more excited and proud.”
Woods shares Charlie and his daughter, Sam, 14, with his ex-wife, Elin Nordegren. The pair divorced in 2010.
The PNC Championship, at the Ritz Carlton Golf Club Orlando, features golf champions teaming with family members. The two-round event will begin on Dec. 18. It will be preceded by a two-day pro-am tournament on Thursday and Friday, although it is unclear if Woods will participate in that.
Woods and Charlie, who has turned heads in previous junior tournaments, participated in last year’s PNC Championship.
“We have been liaising with Tiger and his team for some time and are delighted that he has now decided to make his return to competitive golf at the PNC Championship,” said Alastair Johnston of IMG, the executive chairman of the event.
Last month, Woods posted an Instagram video of himself hitting balls on the course in the first clue that a return was near. He further fueled speculation when he took full swings with driver on Saturday and Sunday during his Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas.
It has been speculated that the PNC Championship would mark Woods’ return to the sport. Golf Channel analyst Notah Begay III — who is close friends with Woods — said the upcoming tournament would be perfect for the 15-time major winner because he wouldn’t have to walk the course as in a PGA Tour event.
“Tiger can ride a cart, he can drive up basically to the golf ball and almost onto the green, so the walking might not be as much of a stress on the leg,” Begay recently said. “But also, he can play Charlie’s drives. I covered them for the majority of that event last year, and Charlie was hitting most of the drives because of where his tees are at, and he’s such a good ball-striker that they were taking advantage of his drives because they were much farther than where Tiger’s balls were off the tee.
“Those are two critical things that I think might factor into him possibly showing up in a couple weeks with Charlie. I know the world would love to see it.”
The PNC Championship was formerly known as the Father-Son Challenge until it changed the title to be more inclusive of family members. For the first time in its 24 years, the tournament has a current No. 1 player in the field, Nelly Korda, who will be playing with her father Petr, a former Australian Open tennis champion.
The next question for Woods, who shares the career PGA Tour record with 82 victories, is: When will he play in an official event? Prior to the announcement, Woods had opened up about what the future could possibly hold for him.
“As far as playing at the Tour level, I don’t know when that’s going to happen,” Woods said last week in his first public appearance since the crash. “Now, I’ll play a round here or there, a little hit-and-giggle. That’s something that for a while there it didn’t look like I was going to. Now I’m able to participate in the sport of golf. Now, to what level, I do not know that.”
— With AP