This hidden benefit of new PGA Tour schedule gives injured players options

A popular assessment of PGA Tour players at the end of August — and the end of their 2024 season — was that they were tired. Scottie Scheffler was drained. Xander Schauffele was talking about his “patience bucket” running on empty. It’s a long season if you’re a top player.

But beyond just being exhausted, at least a couple of star players are hurt, too. Both Jordan Spieth and Ludvig Aberg elected for surgery in the last few weeks to correct issues that had been ailing them and their games. Coincidence, or trend? Hard to say. But with a newfound and well-defined offseason, where there is no pressure to compete for players in the top 100 of the FedEx Cup, elite pros now can hold off on addressing nagging injuries until the season is complete. Much like a quarterback or point guard might do only after their team bows out of the playoffs. 

Spieth has been forthright about his nagging wrist injury throughout 2024 (and even in prior years). As he described it, his wrist repeatedly dislocated, which led to nerve damage in his wrist and arm. Not great for a guy who is torquing those wrists and arms hundreds of times a day.

“Anything that impacted the ground was not a good situation for me this year,” Spieth said during the Wyndham Championship, promising he needed surgery ASAP. The issue flared up at the RBC Heritage in April, and lingered. But it wasn’t so serious that he couldn’t scrape it around and still make cuts. Spieth was 42nd in the FedEx Cup at that point, but failed to finish in the top 20 the rest of the season, finishing 67th but still making the playoffs. All was not lost.

Aberg’s situation was slightly different. He withdrew from the Wells Fargo Championship in May, citing a “knee issue” and electing for some rest ahead of the PGA Championship. He missed the cut at the PGA, while wearing a knee brace, and took off two weeks afterward for additional rest. The rest of his summer looked extremely Aberg-like, save for a missed cut at the Open Championship, but he asserted his knee woes were in the past. All good.

Except, clearly all was not good! Whenever he read putts, Aberg avoided not bending his left knee too much. Unsurprisingly, when Aberg’s season ended, Todd Lewis reported for Golf Channel that Aberg was scheduled to have surgery this week, to fix a meniscus tear on his left knee. Like Spieth, it was an issue, but not serious enough to shut down a season. So Aberg continued onward, played well and made $795,000 in the FedEx Cup and another $3.4 million in the Comcast Business Top 10. Then he did what other pro athletes do: schedule a corrective procedure as those piles of money were secured. 

Perhaps trend isn’t the right word to describe the actions of only two players, but Spieth and Aberg undoubtedly have taken a shared approach. Grind through this year and then deal with it in September. In years past, the Tour schedule — and its season-long points race for status — would start anew this week, just days after the Tour Championship ended. It felt a bit like telling the 400-meter Bronze medalist, “Congrats on that medal! But remember, we’ve got the decathlon coming up. You can skip an event or two, but everyone will have a head start on you.” 

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Where could you fit a meniscus surgery and a 6-week recovery time into that schedule? Players were forced to sacrifice the fall season points grab and start in a deficit, or play through the pain without addressing it, or — likely worse — shut down mid-season and explore the path of a medical exemption.

In Aberg’s case, he doesn’t have to rush back to competition. He’s expected to take September to rest and might be able to fit in a fall event or two in October. But maybe recovery takes a little longer. Maybe he wants to take an extended, unplanned trip back in Sweden. Maybe we don’t see Aberg until Hawaii. In a world where the best players are gassed and maybe even hurt at the end of August, we need to be okay with them taking a break until January. 

In Spieth’s case, there’s even more time. With a more serious recovery path, he can work toward returning in late January — he’s not qualified for The Sentry at Kapalua — without missing much. Using his typical schedule as a template, Spieth may not play until the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, more than four months from now. That may feel like forever in the golf calendar we are used to, but it also may be why Spieth said he needs surgery “ASAP”. Four months might be exactly the amount of time he needs to heal.