Tiger Woods is coming back — again. Golf’s biggest superstar will return to the PGA Tour at next week’s Genesis Invitational, marking his first start of 2025 and his first individual event since last year’s Open Championship.
His start comes with important context. The Genesis, typically played at Riviera Country Club, has been relocated to Torrey Pines this year due to Los Angeles’ devastating fires. The tournament is expected to raise money for victims of the fires, which ravaged several L.A. neighborhoods, including the Pacific Palisades, where they got within blocks of Riviera. Woods announced last month that he planned on providing an update “on our own charitable efforts to help these communities in the coming weeks,” and we’ll expect to hear more about that as tournament week gets underway.
Woods will also be playing just a week after the death of his mother, Kultida. He released a statement on Tuesday that described her as “a force of nature,” his “biggest fan” and “greatest supporter.” He’ll be playing through heartache.
In other words, there’s plenty to focus on other than Woods’ actual golf. But Woods wouldn’t be playing if he didn’t intend to contend, and it’s only natural that golf fans will be chomping at the bit to see him back in competition. So what can we reasonably expect on the course? Let’s buzz through 10 numbers to get reoriented for Tiger’s 2025.
10 Tiger Numbers for 2025
209 — Days between competitive PGA Tour rounds for Woods; he missed the Open cut at Royal Troon on July 19, 2024, and will tee it up on Feb. 13, 2025. We’ve seen him play golf since then, first at the PNC Championship and more recently in two TGL matches. But it’s been a while since we’ve seen the real thing.
8 — Professional events Woods has won at Torrey Pines. He would traditionally start his season at Torrey back when this event was called the Buick Invitational (and Woods was a Buick driver); he picked off six of those titles, including four in a row from 2005-2008. He won the 2013 Farmers Insurance Open, the first of five victories that season. And of course Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open, one of his all-time greatest victories, which came on a broken leg in an 18-hole Monday playoff. (Woods also won the 1991 Junior Worlds at Torrey Pines as a 15-year-old, while we’re keeping track.) It’s fair to look at the rough (long) and the course (long) and the weather (chilly) and tally this up as a terrible course setup for Woods. But this is also one of the courses where he’s won the most.
0 — Times Woods has won the Genesis Invitational (or any iteration of the L.A. Open); it’s one of the few events where he’s made several starts without a victory.
60 — Woods’ best result in 2024; he made the cut at the Masters but shot 82-77 on the weekend.
WD — OK, this isn’t quite a number. But this was Woods’ result at this event last year when he pulled out of the 2024 Genesis midway through Friday’s second round with flu-like symptoms.
5 — Years since Woods’ last top-20 finish on the PGA Tour (excluding the 20-player Hero World Challenge). Shocking, right? It’s wild looking back to Jan. 2020, when Woods was No. 6 in the world, the reigning Masters champion, the winning player-captain of the Presidents Cup and playing arguably the best golf of anybody in the world. In his first start of 2020 he finished T9 at — you guessed it — Torrey Pines. He hasn’t finished higher than T38 (at the 2020 Masters) in 18 Tour starts since.
7 — Tournaments in a row where Woods has lost strokes to the field on approach. This is, of course, a different version of Woods, rusty and injured. But it’s still jarring to see arguably the greatest irons player of all time consistently hit ’em at below-average levels.
5 — Tournaments in his past six starts where Woods has gained strokes over the field off the tee. This has been an unexpected bright spot: Even when nothing else has been going right, Woods has actually hit the driver pretty well.
1,181 — Woods’ Official World Golf Ranking as of this week; he slipped out of the top 1,000 again late last year. Worth noting that he’s still top Tiger, though, safely ahead of talented 21-year-old Tiger Christensen, a German golfer who left Arizona to turn pro last last year and is No. 2,048 in the world.
181 — Woods’ top ball speed with driver during TGL competition. Look, there are plenty of reasons to count Woods out at this point. A bad back. A chilly forecast. A lengthy stretch of poor health and inconsistent play. And the inevitable creep of age. But if you’re looking to be a Tiger optimist — and why not? — here’s a place to start. He can still hit the big ball. Somewhere in there is the greatest player of his generation and a guy with a ridiculous record at Torrey Pines’ South Course.
Should be a fun week.
