The Senior European Tour is heading south of the border for the first time.
The Senior European Tour is heading south of the border for the first time.
The 50-and-over circuit is spreading its wings, announcing on Wednesday a new tournament in Mexico in November.
Past Masters champion Ian Woosnam, U.S. Open champion Michael Campbell and former European Ryder Cup team members Constantino Rocca and Jean van de Velde have a new stop to compete against each other.
Punta Mita, in conjunction with VDV Internacional Golf Manejo, will host the inaugural WCM Mexico Senior Open, November 14-17. Taking place within the gates of the 1,500-acre luxury resort along Mexico’s Pacific coastline, the tournament will gather golf legends from across the globe to play at Pacifico Golf Course—a Jack Nicklaus signature design, which ranks sixth in Golfweek’s Best list for Mexico, Caribbean, Atlantic Islands and Central America. Pacifico is celebrating its 25th anniversary along with the destination in 2024. The course reopened in November 2021 after a six-month closure to restore the greens, bunkers and surrounds with TifEagle Bermuda grass.
Sanctioned by the Senior European Tour and the Mexican Federation of Golf, the WCM Legends Senior Mexico Senior Open is set to feature a stellar lineup of golf legends with six-time major championship winner Lee Trevino serving as an ambassador. Confirmed participants include Woosnam, Campbell, Rocca and Van de Velde, who has taken up permanent residence as resident instructor at Punta Mita. The full field will be formally introduced at a later date from an abundance of major champion golfers currently participating in the Legends Tour circuit as well as the Champions Tour. These players have previously made their mark in prestigious tournaments on the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour), PGA Tour, Ryder Cup, and Presidents Cup.
The event is organized by VDV (Partners) Internacional Golf Manejo, under the leadership of Van de Velde. The sister company, VDV Partners, boasts a successful track record of managing professional golf tournaments, including the last three editions of the WCM Legends Open de France. During the three-day event at Punta Mita, professional golfers will vie for an impressive prize purse of $450,000.
A unique feature of the WCM Mexico Senior Open is the participation of 64 amateur golfers. Amateurs will compete as a team of two players alongside two Legends Tour professionals in a modified alliance format over a three-day period. The team with the most Stableford points will be crowned as the Mexico Senior Open Alliance champions.
Daniel stashed inventory in his parents’ garage. Lee had to park his car outside.
ORLANDO – Tucked in a back corner of the apparel section of the Orange County Convention Center at the PGA Merchandise Show (booth No. 6738) is an upstart brand with an old-school logo.
Super Mex Golf is the creation of Daniel Trevino, son of World Golf Hall of Famer Lee Trevino, who made the sombrero logo with a golf club through it famous, beginning in 1967.
“Being Hispanic, and coming from where I came from, I’m proud of this logo because it shows that if you have perseverance, if you sacrifice, if you work hard – you can be successful. Not just in golf, in anything, you can be successful. That is what this logo’s all about,” Lee is quoted as saying in a postcard-size promotional piece describing the essence of the brand.
Nicknamed Super Mex, Lee had a style and swagger all his own. How Daniel decided to revive the logo — which was marketed by Wrangler during Lee’s heyday in the 1970s — and enter the apparel business is a story in its own right. He recalls making up a small batch of sombrero hats for himself and his dad and wearing them when he played in mini-tour events before COVID struck. He’d sweat in them during the tournament but when it was over his fellow competitors would fight over who could have them as a souvenir. (PGA Tour rookie Blaine Hale Jr. wore the logo at PGA Tour Qualifying School in December, noting he’s a big Lee Trevino fan.)
“I remember thinking there’s a business here,” Daniel said.
Super Mex Golf has a booth at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando for the first time. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
The family discussed licensing the logo to some apparel companies but decided they didn’t want to hand over control of the logo to a third party. Better to do it themselves. The success of pro golfer Zac Blair selling limited-run quantities of his Buck Club hats direct-to-consumer inspired Daniel’s approach. He took the money he earned playing in the 2019 PNC Championship and parlayed it into selling logoed Imperial hats and Dormie headcovers.
“I bought as much as I could with the $8,000 I had and when I sold them all I just kept re-investing what I made into making more,” he said.
Daniel made the leap into the business about 18 months ago, initially stashing his inventory in his parents’ garage to the point that it took up so much space that Lee had to park his car outside. Daniel says he’s shipped over 4,000 orders and taped every box and mailed them at the post office himself. In May 2023, he began selling in earnest and expanded into a warehouse with some additional backing from his dad.
Super Mex Golf apparel sports a retro-inspired look on display at the 2024 PGA Show. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
“I said, ‘How much is it going to take?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ By the time he got a warehouse full, he said, ‘I just need your signature,’ ” Lee recounted to a roomful of listeners during a fireside chat while accepting the NGCOA’s Merit Award at a luncheon at the PGA Show. “I told him, ‘What the heck, I’m almost 85, son, you’re going to get it all pretty soon anyway.’ ”
Lee is a proud member of the PGA of America, earning his Class A card in 1966 before winning 29 times on the PGA Tour, including the PGA Championship twice among his six majors. Daniel already has begun selling his retro-inspired gear at several green-grass shops in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
“His big thing is he always wanted to support the club pro,” Daniel said. “My goal is to do 70 percent green grass, 30 percent online sales. We’re flipped right now.”
Super Mex is back thanks to Daniel and has big plans and so far it’s going super.
ORLANDO – When Lee Trevino started prepping to compete in this year’s PNC Championship, the World Golf Hall of Fame member and six-time major champion topped several balls on the range. Was arguably the best ball-striker in the game lifting his head? Say it ain’t so.
“I never, ever remember doing this in my life,” Trevino said.
His son, Daniel, 31, who is his partner in the two-person scramble format team event that begins on Saturday at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, suggested he go see renowned instructor Randy Smith, who teaches world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. But Trevino made a vow many years ago that he wouldn’t take a lesson from anybody that he could beat. Trevino dialed up Smith and when he answered he said, “Have you got 15 minutes to look at me? I think you can beat me now.”
The lesson helped. Trevino recounted on the Subpar podcast that five weeks ago he made a birdie and nine pars and shot 82 in a fundraiser at Dallas National.
“What are you complaining about?” Daniel said. “You broke your age.”
Trevino, 84, calls the PNC Championship his major and he talks about it all year. He’s played in every edition dating to the inaugural event in 1995 when 10 major winners gathered with their sons. He’s assumed the role of the field’s elder statesman, which has evolved to feature 20 major champions (including women such as Annika Sorenstam) and their relatives competing for the Willie Park Trophy. There’s a wait list just to get in the field.
“It’s like people trying to qualify for Augusta,” Trevino said.
It’s interesting that he should mention the Masters, the only one of the four majors that he never won. He’s failed to win the PNC Championship, too, but the family gathering reflects the growing importance that familial bonds have come to mean to him.
Trevino never knew his father and that absence surely affected Trevino’s outlook on life. He grew up in a household where he rarely heard an encouraging word and re-enacted his youth with his children. “I gave them the roof over their heads, but I didn’t give them the love,” he said. “I was a screamer. I’d have a few beers and get crazy with the kids.”
Rick Trevino, his oldest, recalled in a first-person magazine article that his father would fly in to visit him once or twice a year in Green City, Missouri, where Rick lived with Trevino’s first wife, Linda, and they would speak by phone once every month or two, but otherwise they didn’t have much of a relationship. In later years, Rick would serve as his father’s caddie at the Legends of Golf when it was held at Big Cedar Lodge in Branson, Missouri, not far from where he lived. Lesley, Tony and Troy — his children from his second marriage — became accustomed to a house in which their father was rarely present. It was nothing for him to be gone for eight consecutive weeks. In a Sports Illustrated article, Trevino was once asked if his son Tony had come to resent his absent father. “I think so,” Trevino said, “and I don’t blame him.
“My wives raised four kids that I did not know. I had no clue who they were. I didn’t go to a high school basketball game or a recital. I went to graduation, and that’s it,” he said. “Before I knew it, they were grown up and gone.”
Trevino credits Jack Nicklaus for demonstrating a better way. He recounted teaming with Nicklaus at the 1971 World Cup in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. When they finished a practice round, Trevino suggested that they hit the range. Nicklaus had other ideas. His oldest child, Jackie, had a high school football game. Trevino joined Nicklaus at the stadium. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever done that,” Trevino said
Only later in life did Trevino figure out how to emulate Nicklaus.
“Golf was his living, but he didn’t make it his life,” Trevino told Golf Digest’s Dave Shedlodski of Nicklaus. “I put golf first, and he taught me that was a mistake. I’m a better father now than I ever was. That’s Jack’s impact on me. It says a lot that it has nothing to do with golf.”
Trevino’s youngest children, Olivia and Daniel, were the beneficiaries of their father’s epiphany. The third time was the charm. His family with Claudia Bove, his third wife, became his priority, and nothing stood in the way of time spent with Olivia, born in 1989, and Daniel, who came along four years later. “I’ve been given a mulligan,” Trevino once said. “I was a father before, but not a dad.”
Lee Trevino of the United States reacts after a pro-am partner made a putt on the second hole prior to the PNC Championship at The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club on December 14, 2023 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Mike Mulholland/Getty Images)
In the early years of the team event, Trevino alternated playing with Tony in odd years and Rick in even years. But once Daniel made his debut in 2006, there’s been no rotation. Parental pride swells inside of Trevino whenever he talks about playing golf with Daniel. “You can’t separate us,” Trevino said. “He’s gonna reap from all the neglect I did my other kids.”
While Nicklaus and fellow contemporaries Raymond Floyd and Hale Irwin have all stopped competing in the father-son, Trevino shows no signs of calling it a day, even if his knees may ache, and according to tournament founder Alastair Johnston, he has a lifetime exemption into the limited field.
“He supported me in this event from the beginning and I told him, ‘You can come back for as long as you want,’ and I’ve kept my word,” Johnston said.
And so Team Trevino rolls on. Two years ago, they held the lead with four holes to go only to finish T-3.
“As soon as we get on the plane and go back we start reminiscing about where we made the mistakes and what we need to work on for next year,” Trevino said. “We talk about it all year.”
He built a repeatable push-fade that led to him becoming one of the most accurate ballstrikers of all time,
Lee Trevino, a World Golf Hall of Fame member, won six majors and 29 PGA Tour events in his legendary career. He was born on Dec. 1, 1939.
Trevino is certainly one of the most unlikely multiple-major winners the sport has ever seen. After growing up poor in Texas and working in cotton fields from the age of 5, Trevino learned the game by sneaking onto courses to play and then caddying. He built his nerve in high-stakes gambling games and during a four-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps as a machine gunner.
He built a repeatable push-fade that led to him becoming one of the most accurate ballstrikers of all time, even if he didn’t have the power of adversaries such as Jack Nicklaus or Tom Weiskopf.
After breaking through for his first Tour win and major title at the 1968 U.S. Open at Oak Hill, where he beat Nicklaus by four shots, he went on to win the 1971 U.S. Open at Merion (beating Nicklaus in a playoff); the British Open in 1971 (Royal Birkdale) and 1972 (Muirfield, beating Nicklaus by a shot); and the PGA Championship in 1974 (Tanglewood, again beating Nicklaus by a shot) and 1984 (Shoal Creek).
Affectionately known as the Merry Mex, Trevino was a fearsome competitor who loved to talk during rounds, frequently carrying on one-sided conversations with the galleries. He was the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year in 1971; won the Vardon Trophy (lowest scoring average) in 1970, ’71, ’72, ’74 and ’80; and was the Tour’s leading money winner in 1970. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1981.
Some of the bronze plaques for the 176 members of the World Golf Hall of Fame are better than others.
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — It’s golf’s highest honor.
To be elected into the World Golf Hall of Fame is to be enshrined among the greatest. There have been only 176 men and women to be inducted in the Hall.
When the facility opened at World Golf Village in 1998, the members were commemorated with crystals but they were mounted in the floor and took up too much space for special events. So, the crystals were removed and bronze plaques replaced them. Some are better than others. According to the Florida Times Union, the plaques will not be relocated to Pinehurst, N.C., where the Hall will take up residency again in 2024.
Some of the plaques, it really helps to have the name written below it because the resemblance is minimal at best. See if you can name the Hall member.
“It’s not very pleasant to watch somebody stand over the ball for half an hour,” said Jack Nicklaus.
When Jack Nicklaus says slow play is a problem, you know the topic has officially jumped the shark.
Nicklaus was asked to opine on the pace of play of professional golf during a press conference on Saturday at The Woodlands in Houston ahead of competing in the Greats of Golf, a nine-hole exhibition played during the Insperity Championship on PGA Tour Champions.
“They do have a problem on the Tour today,” Nicklaus said. “The golf ball is a part of the problem. The longer the golf ball goes, the longer the courses get, the more you have to walk, the longer it’s going to take. I don’t think it’s good for the game. (The USGA and R&A have proposed) bringing the golf ball back (and reducing the distance it can travel). I think it’s a good start. It’s the first time they’ve done that in forever. We’ll see where it goes with that.
Nicklaus has long been a proponent of rolling back the golf ball but acknowledged that slow-play penalties are also overdue to be handed out.
“It’s got to be equitable,” Nicklaus added, “but they need to make an example and stay with it. It’s not very pleasant to watch somebody stand over the ball for half an hour.”
Slow play has made headlines recently after weather delays forced the Masters to go to threesomes and split tees in the final round and the glacial pace was exposed on TV. Brooks Koepka, who played in the final group, called out Patrick Cantlay, who also took his time on multiple occasions at the RBC Heritage the following week but pointed out that he was never put on the clock in either instances. Slow play has been a chronic problem in the game and rarely gets addressed in any meaningful way. But that wasn’t the case in Nicklaus’s rookie year.
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The Golden Bear always was a deliberate player but he learned early in his career that his pace of play was too slow. He was penalized two strokes during the second round at the 1962 Portland Open by PGA official Joe Black. Nicklaus still rolled to a six-stroke victory but he learned an important lesson that day.
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Nicklaus said, noting that Black told him, “Jack, you can take as long as you want over the golf ball to play but be ready when it’s your turn.”
“I always tried to stay out of everybody’s way,” Nicklaus continued. “I didn’t want to bother anybody lining up my putt while they were lining up their putt so I stayed back. I didn’t want to start walking my yardages off. I took a while over the golf ball but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was being ready to play. I realized after playing on the Tour for a while that it’s also a courtesy to the field. It’s not fair to do that.”
Nicklaus also blamed caddies for being part of the problem.
“By the time they get through talking, I couldn’t hit a shot anyway,” he said. “It’s a problem.”
The Greats of Golf gathered on Saturday, April 29, 2023, at the Insperity Invitational and played a nine-hole exhibition. (Courtesy Insperity Invitational)
Gary Player echoed that sentiment. “It’s just not fair to the others to be taking the amount of time,” he said. “You are allocated a certain amount of time and you have to adhere to that or you should be penalized.”
Player noted that golfers have three practice rounds and then they spend too much time around the green doing Aim Point and studying their yardage books. “You didn’t see Bobby Locke, Ben Crenshaw or Tiger Woods doing that,” Player said.
“I read the green from 50 yards,” Lee Trevino added. “Keep staring at it while you’re walking you can see every curve on that green. Before you ever get there to read that putt you know exactly the direction it’s going.”
Annika Sorenstam said the problem with pace of play starts at the junior level.
“The juniors watch the pros and they see the Masters and see how much time the pros take and do the same thing,” she said. “I know the AJGA does a good job, but then they get to college and it all goes away and then they turn pro. I think it is a root problem from the beginning.
“Nobody enjoys it and it’s not fair. We’re running out of time, time is a precious commodity, right, so I think start at the very beginning and teach them to hit when you’re ready and go. The more we think, the more complicated it gets, right, so just hit and go.”
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If you’re looking to spend a day watching 16 legends of the game tee it up in the same event, you’re in luck.
This year’s Folds of Honor Greats of Golf exhibition at The Woodlands in Texas is loaded with some of the best players of all time. During the second round of the Insperity Invitational on the PGA Tour Champions, Jack Nicklaus, Annika Sorentam, Gary Player, Lee Trevino and 12 others will play in a nine-hole four-team scramble.
“We feel very privileged to have the opportunity to bring the greatest names in the game of golf back to the Houston area thanks to the support of our new partner, Folds of Honor, during this milestone celebration for our tournament. This collection of legends are true ambassadors and role models in our sport,” said Bryan Naugle, Executive Director, Insperity Invitational, in a press release. “Not only is this a great group of golfers, they are incredible people and special role models for all of us. Reuniting these extraordinary ambassadors of our game has become a staple of tournament week. They provide hours of entertainment and a lifetime of memories for our fans each year.”
Team 1: Sorenstam, Nicklaus, Player, Trevino Team 2: Pat Bradley, David Graham, Tony Jacklin, Tom Kite Team 3: Nancy Lopez, Dave Stockton, Larry Nelson, Hale Irwin Team 4: Juli Inkster, Ben Crenshaw, Bill Rodgers, Fuzzy Zoeller
In all, the group of 16 players accounts for 234 PGA Tour wins, 156 LPGA wins and 77 major championships. Thirteen of the participants are members of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Amateur caddie at Pebble Beach is the latest example of heart attacks or lightning strikes at pro golf events.
A frightening incident occurred on Friday during the second round of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am when the caddie for an amateur player, Pebble Beach businessman Geoff Couch, collapsed on the course while the group including Tour pros Beau Hossler and Max McGreevy and country singer Lukas Nelson were playing the 11th hole.
The caddie received CPR at the scene and was transported to a local hospital. He is alive but there were no additional reports on his condition as of Saturday morning.
Todd Lewis of Golf Channel reported that the person was expected to survive.
After the caddie was transported, PGA Tour rules officials encourage Hossler and McGreevy to continue playing but both said they were too shaken at that point. Other groups began playing through and Hossler and McGreevy returned to the course two hours later after receiving assurances the caddie was out of danger.
Both of them finished the 11th hole with pars and both bogeyed the 12th hole. Hossler played his last eight holes at 1-under and shot 72 and McGreevy played even par after returning and shot 75.
Incidents such as that are rare but every PGA Tour event has numerous first-aid stations and first responders within a short cart ride of any spot on the course. The Players Championship at the TPC Sawgrass, for example, has six first-aid stations, a main medical facility and an entire committee of doctors, nurses and EMTs who volunteer for the tournament each year.
Other notable cases of players, caddies, or fans falling ill or victims of severe weather at professional golf tournaments:
Who calls a total stranger on Christmas to do a lengthy phone interview? Vin Scully, that’s who!
Vin Scully called me on Christmas.
Sure, I had sent him an email interview request hours earlier on Christmas Eve, but it never crossed my mind that he would phone me during the biggest day of the NBA season.
Hearing the sad news that Scully died Tuesday at age 94 made me think back (and dig up our interview transcript) to an occasion that to me said so much about the person he was. Scully may have been synonymous with baseball and the Los Angeles Dodgers, but he broadcast professional golf, too, first for CBS – including the Masters eight times from 1975-1982 – and then with NBC from 1983-1989, where he partnered in the 18th-hole tower with Lee Trevino.
As much as I would have loved to listen to him speak for hours on baseball, it was his time in golf that I was asking him to reminisce about. I had forgotten about this until I did an email search, but the person who shared with me Scully’s contact information (and shall remain nameless) gave it to me on Aug. 13, or more than four months before Christmas. No phone number but an email address – I guess at this point I’m not revealing too much by saying his email started red@ – and a fax number. Who still had a fax? Apparently, Vin did! I never faxed him but now that I think of it, I wish I had just to say I did.
This was some quality procrastination from mid-August to late December, even for me, but sounds about right – have a direct line to the man, the myth, the legend Vin Scully and wait until most of the Catholic world was at a midnight mass service to bother writing him for an interview.
Players and fans stand for a moment of silence for the passing of Vin Scully before the Houston Astros played the Boston Red Sox at Minute Maid Park in Houston on August 3. (Thomas Shea-USA TODAY Sports)
Santa could not have given me a better gift than a call from Vin had jolly Saint Nick landed his sleigh on the roof of my downtown Orlando condo and dumped out a bag of toys. The year was 2013, and while the specifics are a bit vague, I think I had seen a movie earlier that day and was watching the NBA in the late afternoon before dinner with my parents when I answered the phone and heard his unmistakable voice.
I may have procrastinated on writing him, but I had prepped several questions and I scrambled to pull them up on my laptop and fumbled to find my digital recorder. Again, who calls a total stranger on Christmas and sits for a lengthy phone interview? Vin Scully, that’s who!
I’m not going to post the full transcript of the interview, but here are a few things he said about Trevino, a partner he considered a true friend, that stuck out:
“Most people think of Lee Trevino they think of a talkative, outgoing, happy-go-lucky type of guy. He’s like so many people, he’s misunderstood,” Scully said. “He’s an intelligent, sensitive human being. Very bright. We’d sit on the tower and talk about the world events. He had a delightful laugh that everybody loved, but he’s far more than that delightful jokester.
“I marveled at a few things about him. Lee told me one time that he never had a cavity. As someone who has what I call Irish teeth, he had beautiful teeth,” Scully continued. “His eyesight was remarkable. I don’t know what it would be if he read the charts but we would in the tower on a par 5, so it’s a long hole, and then we would be 20 yards away from the green, and he would watch somebody hit off the tee and he’d say he blocked the shot. He had the eyesight of Chuck Yeager. It was incredible.”
“Once in a while I had the pleasure of playing with him,” he told me. “I never asked him anything. At my best, I was a 12 handicap. I’m left-handed. So occasionally we’d be on the range and we’d be facing each other and I’d just marvel at him. He might say something like, ‘Vinny, you’re choking the club to death. Relax.’ Then I’d start hitting a few balls very well and he’d say, ‘OK, let’s go.’ We’d walk 100 yards to the tee and I’d go right back to being what I am, which is hopeless. It was a great privilege to watch him shape shots. Remarkable.”
I asked him to describe how Trevino prepped for a broadcast, and his response was telling about how he went about doing his job and what made him so great. “Technically, in any sport, I always assumed I was the reporter answering the question who, what, where and when but the how – that key word – that belonged to the analyst. I would talk about score, where they are today, the shot, the club, the distance and then get out of the way to allow Lee to give the analysis. I would sit at his feet almost like a child and listen to his explanation of why these things occurred.”
I could go on but this final anecdote he shared is arguably my favorite, because it combined golf and baseball and two athletes that captured the attention of the sporting public.
“There was a wonderful golf writer in England named Bernard Darwin,” Scully began. “He talked about a player that was out of sight in a tournament and then won. He referred to the fact that the golfer had come from the back of beyond. I thought that was such a remarkable phrasing. I used it with Fernando Valenzuela, the Mexican left-hander, who really came from the back of beyond to become more than a hero. I felt that Lee was the same. He came from the back of beyond. He came from hitting golf balls with branches in the cemetery.”
At this point we had talked for 25 minutes and I had exhausted my questions and he had told one gem of a story after another. However, I didn’t really want to hang up. I had the great Vin on the line and I didn’t want this moment to end. I had a pretty good idea that this was going to be a one-and-done for me. But before I could start vamping, he said, “I hope that helps a little bit, Adam. I’ve got family here and I did want to do it before I got overwhelmed.”
I suddenly felt like the worst person in the world. It’s Christmas Day, Vin’s family is over and I’m keeping him from having a glass of eggnog with his wife and kids to do the most-non-deadline of non-deadline interviews you can imagine.
I wished him happy holidays, and that was the extent of my dealings with him, but it left a lasting impression that someone as famous as he would drop everything – even on Christmas Day – to do an interview for a sport he hadn’t covered in over 20 years.
To me, it spoke to Scully’s character and was just a small reason he was such a beloved figure in sports. I loved listening to him call a game before, but after our Christmas Day interview he had secured a permanent space in the upper tier of my sports broadcasting firmament. Vin Scully was pure class in my book, and I can’t help but think of him every year on Christmas Day.
Woods has hoisted the Claret Jug twice at St. Andrews, in 2000 and 2005.
Tiger Woods will start Open Championship week on Monday.
Alongside Rory McIlroy.
Woods, who completed the career Grand Slam with his win on the Old Course in 2000 and won at the Home of Golf again in 2005, will play in the Celebration of Champions as the 150th Open begins at St. Andrews.
Woods, who also won the Claret Jug in 2006 at Hoylake, will be grouped with 2014 Open champ Rory McIlroy, 2018 Women’s British Open champion Georgia Hall and the Merry Mex, Lee Trevino, who won the Open in 1971 and 1972.
“This is going to be a special week of golf and having many of the sport’s great champions and future stars play in this event is a great way to mark this historic championship,” Woods said in a statement. “St. Andrews has such a unique atmosphere, and I’m looking forward to playing in front of the fans again and on a course that holds fantastic memories for me.”
The Celebration of Champions will have the golfers play four holes – the first, second, 17th and 18th. Woods played in the event in 2005, his teammates that year being Tom Weiskopf, Mark O’Meara and Nick Price.
Woods is still recovering from a horrific single-car accident north of Los Angeles in February 2021 that nearly took his life and nearly led to amputation of his right leg. He has played twice this year – making the cut in the Masters and the PGA Championship. He did withdraw from the PGA Championship following the third round in which he was visibly laboring because of his injuries.
Woods decided against playing the U.S. Open at The Country Club near Boston to allow more time to heal.
Defending champion Collin Morikawa will hit the first tee shot Monday and play with AIG Women’s Open champion Anna Nordqvist, Jess Baker, who won the Women’s Amateur Championship at Hunstanton last month, and Asia-Pacific Amateur champion and 2021 Mark McCormack Medal winner Keita Nakajima.
The full draw for the Celebration of Champions will be announced Monday morning. The best two scores out of four on each hole from each team will count. The team with the lowest total over the four holes will win.
Hall already said she’s won.
“It is an absolute thrill to play alongside Tiger, Rory and Lee,” she said. “I think it’s fantastic that the R&A has invited champions from all levels of the sport and I’m sure that Jess and Keita will be massively excited by the prospect of teeing it up with Collin and Anna at St. Andrews.”
