Tiger Woods Still Has No Timeline for Return After Back Surgery
Tiger Woods isn’t ready to compete anytime soon. The 15-time major champion won’t play in the PNC Championship with son Charlie later this month and still doesn’t have a timetable for his return to any competitive golf.
Woods addressed his recovery Tuesday while meeting with media ahead of the Hero World Challenge, the tournament he hosts in the Bahamas. He’s just seven weeks removed from disc replacement surgery on his lumbar spine, his second back operation in about a year.
“It’s not as fast as I’d like it to be,” Woods said of his rehab, which only progressed to chipping and putting last week.
“Can’t really do much,” he added. “Now, we got the OK to start cranking up a little bit in the gym, started strengthening and started doing a little bit more of the rotational component that I haven’t been able to do. Just letting the disc kind of set. A disc replacement takes time. It’s not as long as a fusion, thank God, but it’s going to take time.”
Woods hasn’t competed since his last TGL match on March 4. His most recent regular golf tournament was last year’s PNC Championship, where he and Charlie finished runner-up. Before his October back surgery, Woods was hitting wedge shots at Liberty National in early September, but then his back started feeling “wonky” and a subsequent MRI “didn’t look very good.”
He also underwent surgery to repair a ruptured left Achilles tendon last March, adding to his lengthy injury history.
When asked if he’d considered teaming with Charlie at the PNC but not hitting full shots, Tiger quickly dismissed the idea.
“No, it wouldn’t be fair,” he said. “Not only it wouldn’t be fair to my son, but it wouldn’t be fair to another team that could play and could have that experience that we’ve had for a number of years.”
Tiger turns 50 on December 30, making him eligible for PGA Tour Champions in 2026. While he’s glanced at the senior tour schedule, he hasn’t deeply planned which events, if any, he’ll play. He didn’t mention a target PGA Tour event either, though he hopes to return to TGL before its season ends in mid-March.
“Just let me get back to playing again, let me do that, and then I’ll kind of figure out what the schedule is going to be,” Woods explained. “I’m a ways away from that part of it and that type of decision, that type of commitment level. Unfortunately, I’ve been through this rehab process before, it’s just step by step. Once I get a feel for practicing, exploding, playing, the recovery process, then I can assess where I’m going to play and how much I’ll play…”
What matters most to Tiger right now is simpler than tournament schedules.
“I’d like to come back to just playing golf again. I haven’t played golf in a long time. It’s been a tough year. I’ve had a lot of things happen on and off the golf course that’s been tough.”
“And so, my passion is to just play; I haven’t done that in a long time.”
