Unseemly feeling as golf breathlessly hypes the Charlie Woods show

Social media appeared to get it so right and so wrong at the PNC Championship in Orlando earlier this month.

An event dreamed up by international management group IMG, it was a tournament involving former Major winners and their sons, daughters and grandchildren in a competitive televised golf event.

A blast of a weekend, it was the family face of golf on show. It was the sport in slippers by the hearth with kith and kin just before Christmas. That and a purse of over $1 million, more than 35 hours of national coverage on US network NBC and the Golf Channel and $200,000 for the professional on the winning team.

Charlie is the 12-year-old son of Tiger Woods, the 15-times Major winner, who was making a competitive return to golf after a serious car accident in February. It is fair to say the pair freely sprinkled their magic dust over the event.

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Although the competition was won by John Daly and his son John Daly II, you could have believed from the coverage that second-placed Woods Inc had earned the largest chunk of weekend fun money.

As it morphed into the Charlie show, the financial services company and tournament sponsor, the PNC was artfully renamed online as the championship of Players Named Charlie.

Not that they would mind a giggle. Audience figures were up by 50 per cent on last year and almost quadruple the number for 2019. That was before Charlie and dad arrived in their red and black co-ordinated outfits.

Their clothes were not the only things to match. Charlie’s body language, the twirl of his club, the fist pump, walking after his ball on putts and enough shots that belonged on the pro tour triggered a fawning contest that veered towards excess and was more than mildly creepy.

The PGA Tour and commentary teams were also guilty of heaped eulogies, both this year and in 2020 when the pair made their first appearance. So feverish were they that Ryder Cup player Lee Westwood last year cracked out a warning shot on Twitter expressing concern shared by many.

“Hey @PGATOUR I lived and saw first hand the intensity and scrutiny the world put on his dad. Give Charlie a break and just let him be a kid and enjoy his golf and childhood. I might be wrong here but please take a step back and let him play with his dad and enjoy himself.”

Understandably there was genuine interest in the child of the most celebrated golfer to have lived. But given the forensic examination of his swing, the endless comparisons to his father using patched together clips and the intense curiosity in what clubs he was carrying in his bag and the wonder was why so few shouted back off.

The difficulty is knowing how a primary school-aged child can process not just the overblown attention but the wild expectations based on no more than raw talent and some magical genetics

The excessive enthusiasm and speculation on how far down the line he had travelled towards an assumed career in the sport was at best disagreeable and even troubling.

Although it was largely positive and encouraging, so too were the comments inflated and cringeworthy enough that the lasting impression was of a golf industry shamelessly profiteering off a minor.

Magical genetics

There is the argument that it is the life he has been dealt. Being the son of Woods was always going to be one of clamouring photographers, security details, prurient media attention and a lack of privacy or anonymity balanced against the incredible privilege and wealth the lifestyle provides.

The difficulty is knowing how a primary school-aged child can process not just the overblown attention but the wild expectations based on no more than raw talent and some magical genetics. And the speculation on where Charlie could be in 10 years time seemed woefully inappropriate.

There is considerable evidence showing that his father struggled with the fame he created and with the personal toll the millions of fans he single-handedly drew to the sport took on him. The suffocating journey from Tiger the person into Tiger the global brand evidently had consequences. And there is an irony to that.

Criticised for his corporate mien and banalities on camera, it wasn’t until his flaws appeared in public that a human side emerged. While his errors were distasteful and many were quick to make moral judgments on his infidelities, a more real Tiger emerged, one that, broken with injury, almost impossibly won another Masters.

Although he lives in the eye of the storm, the assumption is the father understands the celebrity playbook, that enough kids have become the tragic punch line for adults.

IMG have a winner on their hands with the tournament. Famous fathers and mothers playing with their children in a televised competition is an attractive, if contrived piece of business and because of the nature of golf, it is one of the few sports where that format can work.

But the unintended consequences for Charlie are maybe an important glimpse of what lies ahead. He is already a consumer product.

It was supposed to be a Karaoke weekend in Florida with a 12-year-old. But it became a Marilyn Manson act. That's the way fame breaks, one minute smashing the ball with a smile, the next edging towards a voyeuristic spectacle.