Tiger Woods is back next week. Find out what’s coming here

When ESPN released a short clip of Tiger Woods striking out on a giant screen Friday afternoon, it was a reminder of what’s to come in 2025. Woods will come back to play more tournament golf (we think). The TGL season will also begin (we’re pretty sure of that). The PGA Tour season will begin in Hawaii (in which case we are more confident). And we’ll be ready to dive all the way in.

But Woods’ performance was also a reminder that there’s still a little toothpaste left in the golf tube for 2024. Woods skipped last week’s Hero World Challenge, citing his unwillingness to play (and run) 72 holes against the best in the world. But this week he will compete in the PNC Championship in Orlando alongside his son Charlie, giving us a glimpse of Woods’ game for the first time since the Open Championship in July.

But what else is there to golf before the New Year arrives? Here are five golf things to keep an eye on before the end of the year, starting with Tiger and getting more obscure from there.

1. The PNC Championship

I say this seriously: the day before The PNC Championship is one of the best random, non-tournament programs available in professional golf all year. The Golf Channel team will rummage around the course and pick up adorable pieces of gold from legends and their children who are made to feel good by each other’s presence. Just last year, Lee Trevino spoke within a few minutes about his daily routine and Padraig Harrington’s profound parenting philosophy. Come for Tiger and Charlie, stay for everything else. And that’s before the tournament actually starts!

Once we get started, it’s also a lot of fun, especially when you’re with the family on vacation – the PNC is a good group watch. I’m particularly excited about the addition of Fred Couples to this year’s field, and with Justin and Mike Thomas absent, I figure there’s a good chance we’ll see Couples’ group in Woods…

2. “The Showdown”

I would say the Crypto Dotcom Showdown coming to you on Tuesday, December 17th at 6pm ET from Shadow Creek in Las Vegas. Is this the evil battle everyone has dreamed of? Somehow. There’s a lot of great stuff about this: Brooks and Bryson vs. Rory and Scottie, pitting four of golf’s biggest names and personalities against each other. It’s LIV vs. PGA Tour, with the possibility of real rivalry spilling over into a friendly match. It’s Tuesday night, there’s no football to compete with. These are three six-hole games that mix formats and conclude with singles matches. And it’s December 17th – what else are you up to?!

Sure, maybe there’s an upside to the whole thing, knowing that all four pros want golf to come together, knowing that McIlroy and Koepka played together in a Grove XXIII members’ tournament last week, and knowing that there is far more good vibes than rivalry within this group. But there is also a lot of competitive fire. If these guys have one thing in common, it’s that they desperately hate losing. This is a victory for us.

3. The Mauritius Open

What do I know about this golf tournament? Not much more than the dates, December 19th to 22nd, the defending champion Louis Oosthuizen and the fact that it calls itself “golf’s most beautiful week”. Epos. If you live outside the United States or only get up at odd hours and are looking for golf insurance, this could be right for you. This is the final DP World Tour event of the year – although, confusingly, it is also one of the first of the season, completing the global tournament’s run through southern Africa following last week’s Nedbank Golf Challenge and this weekend’s Alfred Dunhill Championship. What will happen at Mont Choisy Le Golf? Get up early, tune in and find out.

4. “Warm Up” returns

This is a potentially problematic take since it’s my YouTube series, but here we are. Our first season of “Warming Up” produced some of my favorite conversations of my professional life—I got to conduct driving range interviews with a handful of mega-talents and delve deep into processes and mindsets with everyone from Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau to Fred Couples , Shane Lowry and Viktor Hovland. Who’s next? I just want to point out that he recently won a major championship. At least one. To make sure you don’t miss it, you can subscribe here…

A favorite from last season, just to try:

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5. Two fascinating documentaries

I don’t know if they’re fascinating because of the actual content or just because I find it fascinating that they exist, period. Maybe they’re literally just fascinating to me. But there are two Team Golf documents that I’ve just finished, and while I’m not prepared to give an outright endorsement, I’m at least curious to hear what you’ll think of them. There’s a documentary on YouTube about LIV’s Majesticks, the team co-led by Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Henrik Stenson, as they fight their way through the 2024 LIV season from the bottom of the table. And next week there’s UnCommon, the docuseries about the construction of the TGL’s Boston franchise, which should include various setbacks – the collapse of the dome, the departure of team member Tyrrell Hatton, etc. – and a fascinating countdown to the start of the league. Would I have liked both documents to have been created independently, without editorial oversight from the people involved? Definitely 1000 percent yes. That could have raised some existential questions about what we are all doing here. But we take what we have. It is, after all, mid-December.