PGA Tour Champions President, Miller Brady, says plans are already being made for Tiger Woods’ arrival on the over-50 circuit.
Woods, who celebrated his 48th birthday last year on December 30th, will be eligible for the Champions Tour in 2026 and Brady says the Tour will welcome Woods with open arms, with plans already in the works to prepare for the 15-time Major champ’s potential arrival.
“I took our entire team, anyone who touches the product, middle of the year last year and we gathered and started a whiteboard of what ifs, the craziest things, whatever it was, you know, come up with it,” Brady said in an interview with Golfweek.
“Because it’s not too early to just think through everything. So we’ve done that, we’ve had conversations at the annual meetings with all of our tournaments about it.”
There has been plenty of speculation about Woods’ future in golf as he continues to recover from injuries he suffered during a 2021 car crash, which left him needing emergency surgery and kept him from competing for over a year.
In 2023, Woods withdrew from the Masters on Saturday evening, stating that he had a recurrence of plantar fasciitis. Shortly after, Woods underwent ankle surgery to address issues with a talus fracture from his 2021 accident.
At the end of November, he returned to action in the limited-field Hero World Challenge, where he finished 18th out of 20 players, with the American then featuring in the PNC Championship alongside his son, Charlie.
While Woods has yet to officially commit to any plans once he turns 50, he has reportedly expressed a desire to compete on the Champions Tour, with the ability to play in a golf cart a big motivation. In a press conference in December 2021, Woods even joked: “Four more years and I’m in a cart.”
Brady said he’s heard from other Champions Tour players of Woods’ desire to play on the Tour: “You know, you hear comments from time to time about how he can’t wait to have a golf cart," he told Golfweek. "He has conversations with Steve Stricker or Ernie Els or some of these other guys. You know, they’ll come back and tell me they’ll say he’s looking forward, which is great.
“What does that mean? I have no illusions that he’s going to come out here and play 15 times. If he plays four times, that would be fantastic, if he plays 10 times that would be even better.”
Brady also revealed that he has spoken to Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, about the Tour and its cart policy: “I’ve had a conversation with Steinberg, just more than anything just to educate them. We had a great conversation about the Champions Tour - how many events we have, the markets where we play, Majors, some of the courses where we play early, a little bit about our cart policy.”
Obviously, if Woods were to play it would produce an unprecedented impact on the Tour and events, with Brady admitting: “Will our ratings go up? Absolutely. Could I see NBC and Golf Channel wanting to put an event on the network? Yeah. Tiger would have to commit early enough for us to make that happen. If he commits on the Friday before, we’ve had this conversation with tournaments, they won’t be prepared for it: ticket sales, which turns into an issue with your security, your transportation shuttles, concessions, everything. That was part of that white board that we did.”
For now, Woods is focussed on playing more regularly on the PGA Tour, saying last year that he hopes to play “a tournament a month” going forward. Although not announced, many have stipulated his first tournament of 2024 could come at next month’s Genesis Invitational at Riviera, alongside his event hosting duties.
