Charlie Woods to Attempt to Qualify for PGA Tour Event

The son of the 82-time Tour winner is ramping up his competitive schedule: He also got an exemption to play in his first AJGA event.

Charlie Woods, son of 82-time PGA Tour winner Tiger Woods, will attempt to qualify for the PGA Tour’s Cognizant Championship this week.

Woods, 15, has officially entered Thursday’s pre-qualifier at Lost Lake Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla. The news was first announced on PGATour.com on Wednesday. 

Woods will need to advance through two competitive stages of qualifying in order to earn a tee time at the Cognizant Classic, which will take place from Feb. 28-March 3 at PGA National Resort’s Champion Course. 

Thursday’s 18-hole event is one of four sites in which roughly 150 players will compete to earn a spot in the second and final stage of qualifying—otherwise known as the “Monday qualifier” as it takes place the Monday prior to the tournament. Twenty-five players and ties will advance to the Monday qualifier from pre-qualifying. Then, only the top four players from the Monday qualifier will move on to the PGA Tour event. 

Woods is set to tee off in the pre-qualifier at 7:39 a.m. ET on Thursday. 

At age 15, Woods has competed in plenty of junior golf tournaments but has yet to face an elite level of competition that he will encounter at the Cognizant pre-qualifying site. But the high school junior is clearly working on ramping up his competitive schedule. 

Sports Illustrated has learned that Woods will also make his AJGA (American Junior Golf Association) tournament debut in March at the Will Lowery Junior Championship. He’ll be playing the top-tier junior event on a sponsor’s exemption from March 21-24 at Carolina Trace Country Club in Sanford, N.C. 

Woods is currently ranked 1,300th in the country on Junior Golf Scoreboard. In the 16 events that have counted towards his ranking, Woods has two wins and two top-5 finishes. 

The teen has also played alongside his father in the last four iterations of the PNC Championship, the PGA Tour’s father-son event in December. 

The elder Woods first competed in a PGA Tour event as an amateur at age 16 at the 1992 Los Angeles Open at Riviera Country Club, where he played on a sponsor’s exemption and missed the cut. Tiger went on to win his first PGA Tour event in 1996 at the Las Vegas Invitational at age 20. By age 21 he had won his first Masters, becoming the youngest champion in the history of the tournament.