Tiger Woods’ Son Takes Major Step Toward Following In Dad’s Footsteps

It appears Charlie Woods is getting ready to go into the family business.

The 15-year-old Woods, the son of 18-time major winner Tiger Woods, will tee it up Thursday in a pre-qualifier for the PGA Tour's Cognizant Classic, the Tour announced Wednesday.

The younger Woods has plenty of work to do before he's playing with the big boys, though. Thursday's pre-qualifier, held at Lost Lake Golf Club in Hobe Sound, Fla., is just to get into a Monday qualifier ahead of the Cognizant Classic. According to the Tour's website, 25 players will advance to the Monday qualifier, and of that group, just four will get into the Tour tournament.

The Cognizant Classic, formally the Honda Classic, starts Feb. 29 at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens.

Charlie Woods and his father, for that matter, have been quiet in recent years about his career aspirations. From the little we've seen on the younger Woods, though, it's clear he has a future in the sport -- if he wants it. His genes are obviously pretty good, and he has grown up in the sport under the greatest of all time's tutelage.

Golf fans have gotten to know Charlie Woods in recent years, too, largely from watching him at the PNC Championship, the Tour's parent-child tournament held every year in December after the Tour's season concludes.

Charlie Woods has proved to be a chip off the old block thus far.

"I think his speed has gone dramatically up since last year," Tiger said at a press conference for the PNC earlier this year, as transcribed by GolfDigest.com. "But I think more than anything, it's just the fact that he's grown so fast. The aches and pains of growing, just teenage life."

Of course, it doesn't sound like Tiger is rushing Charlie, either.

"I provide guardrails for him and things that I would like to see him learn and address, but also, then again, I'm trying to provide as much space as I can for him," Woods added. "Because there's so much of the noise in our lives that people are always trying to get stuff out of us, and My job as a parent is to protect him from a lot of that stuff."

Apparently, Tiger Woods feels ready to tweak those guardrails a little bit, as early as Thursday when Charlie Woods is sure to generate a level of attention for a small event that probably hasn't been seen since, well, his father.