Tiger Woods teams up with Augusta National on course design, school projects

AUGUSTA – Five-time Masters champion Tiger Woods will partner Augusta National Golf Club on a municipal golf course design project and set up a new TGR Learning Lab in the tournament’s home town, the club’s chairman Fred Ridley said on April 7.

With the 89th edition of the Masters set to tee off on April 10, Ridley announced that the club’s renovation of Augusta Municipal Golf Course – known locally as The Patch – would include a nine-hole par-three course designed by the former world No. 1 and his course architecture firm TGR Design.

The club will also tie up with Woods’ charitable foundation to create a TGR Learning Lab in Augusta, which will be the fourth such facility launched by the veteran golfer aimed at providing access to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics education for students in under-resourced communities.

Ridley said the partnership evolved after a discussion with Woods about The Patch project during a round of golf.

“I don’t know if it was a light-bulb moment, but I happened to be playing golf with Tiger about a year ago, a couple weeks before the Masters, and I thought I would mention The Patch Project, which I think we were formally announcing that week at the tournament,” he said.

“It was clear when I shared the concept that it piqued his interest, and that was sort of the beginning of a conversation... and after that a few meetings took place, and the idea grew to how Tiger and TGR could be involved.”

Ridley added that the short course that Woods will design will be called The Loop at The Patch in a nod to “caddies who have used the course as a gathering spot for decades”.

While Augusta National has a become a byword for exclusivity, he said the club is determined that the renovated municipal course, including The Loop, will remain affordable and accessible to local golfers.

Woods’ role in that project and in bringing the Learning Lab to Augusta is a way of “deepening Tiger’s legacy in Augusta and with the Masters”, Ridley added.

Woods himself did not attend the announcement as originally intended. The 15-time Major champion revealed in March that he had undergone surgery to repair a ruptured left Achilles tendon.

The injury derailed the 49-year-old’s latest bid to return from injury. He has not teed it up in a tournament since the British Open last July. Two months later he underwent back surgery.

He had planned to play in the Genesis Invitational in February, but withdrew in the wake of his mother’s death.

He hosted the Hero World Challenge in December, played alongside his son Charlie in a family tournament that month and saw TGL, the simulator league he launched with Rory McIlroy, get off the ground in 2025. AFP