Tiger Woods details unexpected health setbacks, casts doubt over future starts

Tuesday morning of Hero World Challenge week has become a bizarre rite of passage in professional golf, because Tuesday morning of Hero World Challenge week has become a window into Tiger Woods’ future.

For years, Woods has made this week’s 20-player exhibition a staging ground for various career reboots, which has made his annual Tuesday morning press conference a place for us to learn a little something about how the current vision looks. How’s Tiger feeling? What’s his hope for the future? Might he play five events in the upcoming season, or five before the U.S. Open?

Because he is Tiger Woods, his answers have long qualified as highly newsworthy information. And, because he is Tiger Woods, his answers have changed almost every year.

On this Tuesday morning’s Hero World Challenge, the tone was modest. Woods entered the interview room at Albany Golf Club as tournament host but not tournament competitor, electing to sit out the action as he recovers from at least his sixth back surgery of the last decade, a microdiscectomy performed at the beginning of September.

The 15-time major champ looked the part of pro golfer, sporting the same chiseled upper body that has helped to rebalance his swing in the years since the car accident that robbed his lower body of power. But as he spoke to the assembled press, it became clear that he did not feel like one.

“I’m not tournament sharp yet, no. I’m still not there,” he said. “These are 20 of the best players in the world, and I’m not sharp enough to compete against them at this level. So when I’m ready to compete and play at this level, then I will.”

Woods’ words undermined the sentiment he shared last December, when he revealed his hope to play in one event per month in 2024, starting with the Genesis Invitational in February and ending, perhaps, with the Tour Championship in September. Tiger mustered just four starts in that time and recorded a 72-hole score only once, at the Masters.

On Tuesday he revealed that the source of the struggle in ’24 was, in fact, his back, where an unexpected bout with spasms had caused pain radiating from his spine and down his leg at various points throughout the season.

“I didn’t think my back was going to go like it did this year,” Woods said. “It was quite painful throughout the end of the year and hence I had another procedure done to it to alleviate the pain I had going down my leg.”

The September microdiscectomy surgery, to alleviate pressure caused by a herniated disc on the spinal column, should help Woods play closer to pain-free in the future. He underwent the same procedure in 2021, one of a half-dozen spinal surgeries he has faced since his famed spinal fusion in 2017.

Still, in the Bahamas, it was clear that the toll of his hours under the knife was beginning to add up — both physically and psychologically.

“The fire still burns to compete,” Woods said. “But as far as the recovery process of going out there … and doing it consistently at a high level, I can’t. For some reason, the body just won’t recover like it used to. That’s part of age and part of an athlete’s journey.”

Between his leg and back, Woods has undergone north of a dozen surgeries in the last decade, and that’s to say nothing of the knee procedures after his famed U.S. Open victory in 2008. Countless hours of discomfort have filled the moments between those surgeries — painful hours in rehab, struggles on the golf course, and, of course, the development of new injuries.

“Whether my commitment going forward is once a month, yeah, I could say that all over again, but I truly don’t know,” he said. “I’m just trying to rehab and still get stronger and better and feel better, really give myself the best chance I can going into next year.”

On Tuesday at the Hero World Challenge, the latest glimpse into Tiger Woods’ future was not rosy. His latest answers about his health and playing schedule were not overly optimistic. And yet there was the same, steady drumbeat underlying his question-and-answer session — the same sense of unresolved tension that keeps us returning to this golf tournament and this podium every December. The flickers of hope are dimmer now, but you don’t have to look hard to find them.

“This year was kind of — I had to toss it away,” Woods said. “I wasn’t as sharp as I needed to be and I didn’t play as much as I needed to going into the major championships and I didn’t play well at them. Hopefully next year will be better, I’ll be physically stronger and better. I know the procedure helped, and hopefully I can build upon that.”