How Tiger Woods’ surprising humanness changed this pro’s mindset

For all the talk about the PGA Championship lacking an identity, the tournament has at least one feature that distinguishes it from any other major or marquee PGA Tour event: the 20 places in the field designated for club professionals.

Among that crew this week at Quail Hollow is Tyler Collet, a 29-year-old assistant pro at John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Fla. Collet is playing in his fourth PGA Championship after appearances in 2021, 2022 and 2024; this year he cruised into the field, winning the PGA Professional Championship by a record 10 shots.

On Wednesday morning, Collet played a practice round with Cameron Young, who this week also is playing in his fourth PGA Championship. In his first PGA start, at Southern Hills in 2022, Young, you may recall, was deep in the hunt on Sunday afternoon, before a shot into a greenside bunker and a three-putt on the 70th hole sunk his title hopes. It happens. Even the best players in the world hit loose shots — or flat-out bad ones — a lesson, Collet said, that was seared into him earlier that week in Tulsa.       

“I’m going to tell a story that I probably shouldn’t …” Collet began to reporters Wednesday.

On the Sunday before the championship, Collet said, he was smoothing balls on the range — he had the place to himself — when another player saddled up next to him and began his own practice session. But not just any player. Tiger Woods.  

“He drops balls next to me, literally right next to me,” Collet recalled, seemingly still in disbelief. “Really cool.”

Then came another surprise, an epiphany even: Woods, proud owner of 82 PGA Tour wins, 15 major titles and golfing immortality, wasn’t perfect. A block here, a tug there. A groove high, a groove low.  

“He’s a human being,” Collet said, “and he was mis-hitting shots just like I was.”

Collet continued: “As we play on this level, we know what a thin shot sounds like, we know what a fat shot sounds like. Obviously when he hits it good it’s a different sound; obviously he’s the best ever to do it. But I know what a thin shot sounds like, and I know what a push sounds like or a pull. And he was hitting those shots just like everyone else would.”

Collet wasn’t recounting the story to throw shade. Nothing close to that. His point was golfers of all abilities can and should take solace in the fact that even supreme talents like T. Woods don’t always find the center of the clubface. “Everybody hits bad shots,” Collet said, “but just try to have fun with it.”

Easier said than done? Of course.

Who among us hasn’t sworn off the game after a yanked tee shot into the trees or topped wedge into a pond? Few endeavors on earth can expose your soul with more ruthless efficiency than this magnificent, maddening game.

Ask British pro Eddie Pepperell, who in the second round of the DP World Tour’s Turkish Open last week rinsed two balls on the par-3 6th hole on his way to a quad — then raised a white flag. He was done for the week. A few days later, Pepperell admitted, poetically, on the podcast he cohosts, “The fire that used to burn in me is an ember at best, and I’m trying to blow on it gently to try and get it back to life and find the wisdom that can enable that.”

Collet gets that. He said he wasn’t always so loosey-goosey, certainly not when he was coming up the junior ranks in West Virginia or playing college golf at Eastern Kentucky or trying to find his way as a touring pro after college. Because in those days making birdies and avoiding bogeys was his job, he said, “I never had fun doing it.”  

But now that competitive golf is only part of his livelihood, Collet said, his mindset has changed. “It’s not the end of the world anymore,” he said of weeks when his swing isn’t cooperating or putts aren’t dropping. “It’s a game that I love to play, and it’s obviously the highest level, but it’s not like it’s life and death out there. I think that calms my mind down and calms my approach, and I play better because of it.”

Collet is grouped in the first two rounds at Quail Hollow with Jimmy Walker, who won the 2016 PGA Championship, and 52-year-old Richard Bland, who won the Senior PGA Championship last year.

Collet can learn something from them. And surely they from him.