Given his medical history, it may come as little surprise that Tiger Woods needed another back procedure, announced on Saturday evening. It also fits the mysterious theme that tends to surround his life.
Woods didn’t play a competitive golf tournament all year due to an Achilles injury suffered in March, so it's fair to surmise that he took a minimal amount of golf swings in 2025. Certainly fewer than he would've if he'd played tour golf, or even prepped for major championships.
So it is impossible to know what led to this latest procedure, described as lumbar disk replacement surgery, which occurred on Friday.
Perhaps Woods started to ramp it up and felt lingering discomfort. Maybe it was simply always going to be necessary.
But Woods had what is called a microdecompression procedure just more than a year ago in the area where the disk was replaced. That type of procedure typically buys more time than what Woods got out of it. So who knows exactly why this was necessary.
It is quite possible, however, that this will bring him relief. Woods said nothing in his statement about returning to golf. Since the 2021 car crash that severely injured his lower right leg, Woods has tried to undersell any comebacks.
But this procedure, in the area above the spine where he had a spinal fusion performed in 2017, should allow him to get back to golf, if he desires, until the next issue arises.
As was noted at the time of the 2017 spinal fusion—which was viewed far more as a quality-of-life issue than returning to golf—Woods was likely to experience further distress higher up the spine from where it was fused. And that is what has occurred. Since that area was now treated, the stress of the golf swing or other activities travels a bit farther up the spine.
Woods has now had two disk procedures since the spinal fusuion and now a disk replacement.
This Latest Operation Was With a Different Doctor
For the medical wonks, it is perhaps curious that Woods didn’t return to Dr. Richard Guyer for this latest operation. Dr. Sheeraz Qureshi was noted in the release as having performed last week's disk replacement in New York.
He also handled last year’s microdecompression in Florida and the previous microdiscectomy which occurred in December 2020.
Guyer performed the spinal fusion in 2017 and is a noted expert in the field, having been among the first doctors to perform disk replacement some 25 years ago at his Texas Back Institute.
Although Guyer has never specifically discussed Woods’s procedure due to privacy laws, he has remained a fan of the golfer and has occasionally expressed his support through media inquiries or social media.
Woods ended up using Guyer due to a whirlwind effort to get to the bottom of his troubles in 2017 after a three-year futile search to relieve pain. At that point, he had endured three microdiscectomies and was more or less out of options.
With the help of his then-physical therapist Dan Hellman, Woods traveled to London following the 2017 Masters Champions Dinner at Augusta National, where he was in immense pain.
It was Hellman who accompanied Woods and later oversaw his rehabilitation throughout his comeback year of 2018.
Given all that has occurred since, it is best to probably appreciate the fact that Woods came back at all. He managed to not only win the Masters in 2019 but added two other PGA Tour titles and climbed as high as sixth in the Official World Golf Ranking.
I covered a good bit of this ground in my 2024 book DRIVE: The Lasting Legacy of Tiger Woods. Hellman revealed that what he learned in London astonished him. He described what Woods did in trying to compete in 2014–15 was “a feat of human determination. To see that, even playing three rounds of golf [in early 2017] with a spine like that ... it’s just amazing.”
Woods ‘Took a Tremendous Amount of Courage’ to Return to Golf
The idea behind the visit was to get recommendations on how to proceed. One of the doctors Woods visited with was Dr. Damian Fahy, a spinal surgeon at the Fortius Clinic who told The Daily Telegraph after Woods’s 2019 Masters victory—roughly two years after the surgery—that “people don’t realize just how much pain Tiger was in.
“When he first came to see me, his first thought was to get to a place where he would be able to spend time with his kids without breaking down in agony. The pain was 24/7.
“You never know how a person will recover. Most of it will depend on the patient’s strength of mind. But if he was to get back to playing golf at all, we saw that as a bonus. To get back to the point where he could win the Masters is incredible.
“It took a tremendous amount of courage to go through what he did. He had achieved everything in the sport. A lot of people would have accepted that and retired to a quiet life, but that wasn’t enough for Tiger.”
Fahy was proposing spinal fusion surgery and eventually Woods and his team decided on Guyer, who performed the procedure on April 17, 2017, barely two weeks later. A year later, Woods was flourishing on the golf course.
But since winning the 2019 Zozo Championship for his 82nd PGA Tour victory, Woods has played in just 21 worldwide official events. He missed all of 2021 due to the car crash in February that severely damaged his lower right leg, and he didn’t play this year after the Achilles injury.
Much of the focus on his 2022 comeback understandably focused on his ability to walk. And this year, his Achilles injury was a setback that would clearly require a lengthy rehab. But beneath the surface, there have always been those lingering, numerous back issues.
How effective he'll one day be remains the stuff of conjecture.
Just as this is: Woods can still likely return sometime early in 2026 if he feels up to it. The Champions Tour is a soft landing spot to sharpen his game. He’ll likely want to play the majors, although he’s not exempt for the U.S. Open.
It is amazing to think that he has not played at Royal Birkdale, site of next year’s British Open, since finishing third there in 1998. He missed the 2008 and 2017 Opens at Birkdale due to injury. A return to the Old Course at St. Andrews, where he won twice and notably returned in 2022, seems like something he’d like to do.
Woods turns 50 in December, and it’s somewhat sad to think that he can’t do the thing for which he has achieved so much fame. Jack Nicklaus played all of the major championships until he was 58 and the last of his majors at age 65. Can Woods? Does he want to?
All of those are questions for another day. Woods should take his time. A few Champions Tour starts might be helpful, but he deserves to do this on his terms, however it plays out.
Who Will LIV Golf Sign?
It's so far been a quiet offseason for the LIV Golf League, which has yet to announce how it will conduct its Promotions event or how many players will earn a spot in the league via the International Series.
There’s been plenty of speculation about player signings to date, with nothing yet official. Golf Digest last week reported that LIV Golf is in discussion with two recent PGA Tour winners.
Another name that came up in speculation was Englishman Marco Penge, who won the Spanish Open on Sunday but told the Spanish website Ten-Golf that he would not be going to LIV. Because he will finish among the top 10 players in the DP World Tour Race to Dubai standings, Penge will be eligible to join the PGA Tour in 2026.
“I’m going to America [Monday] with my wife to find a place for when we move in January,” he told the website. “So as far as I’m aware, I’m playing the PGA Tour next year and hopefully I’ll have a great season and finish in the playoffs there and then come back to the DP World Tour and play the rest of the season here.
“I love playing golf and I’d play every week if my team let me. I want to be playing against the best players in the world and I want to be playing national opens like this. When you win a couple of national opens, that’s something that I’ll ever forget and something that my family will never forget. So, that’s my plan.”
LIV Golf relegated six players out of the league at the conclusion of its season in August, including Henrik Stenson. The teams in the past have pushed back against taking players from the International Series or via a qualifying tournament.
Also, there are players who finished outside of the league’s top 24 finishers who—if not under contract—are vulnerable to being replaced.
All of that leads to conjecture about the possibility of LIV adding teams so more can come into the league via an outside pathway, while also leaving room for signings. It is believed that the huge upfront money players previously received has been cut down, and possibly covered by the various teams.
Still, with $20 million individual purses and another $10 million each week for the teams, there is significant cash up for grabs.
Then there's the pending Official World Golf Ranking application, which was submitted in July without any details emerging. Has LIV Golf submitted a plan that checks some of the boxes the OWGR outlined back in 2023—such as more promotion and relegation? Or is it working with LIV to come up with some alternative?
OWGR has acknowledged that's it's concerned about not properly ranking players such as Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm. But it also laid out a vague pathway to points that involved LIV creating more opportunities for outside access, which may be what LIV is now addressing.
But time is running out. It takes time to create a promotions event in December with a full field of players. And there are just four International Series events left, with the players vying for the top spot (or spots) while unsure exactly if a LIV opportunity is at stake.
Cuts Arrive on the PGA Tour Champions
The PGA Tour is cutting the pension fund for players on PGA Tour Champions, a move that is undoubtedly tied to the new for-profit enterprise.
The Tour is not taking money away from a fund but simply making less available for players, who earn pension credits on the 50-and-over circuit by finishing among the top 48 players. (PGA Tour players earn pension credits by making cuts.)
According to Golfweek, the fund is being cut from $10 million to $8 million, which means players will accrue less per pension credit.
“It’s disheartening,” said Peter Jacobsen, a longtime member of both tours who also works in broadcasting. “The PGA Tour clearly has a lot of money right now and they’re spending a lot of money keeping players from going to LIV, and we’ve kind of slowly become LIV. I think we are giving way too much money to way too few players on the PGA Tour and the players on the Champions Tour live by the decisions made by the PGA Tour.”
As the Tour gets leaner to meet the obligations of private investment, the Champions Tour and Korn Ferry Tour face some possible contraction. The PGA Tour Champions currently has 24 tournaments and has seen sponsor renewals in recent years which means some 70% of the schedule is contracted through 2029.
Among the events to renew was the recent Constellation Furyk & Friends event through 2030.
A sponsor pays far less for PGA Tour Champions event than a PGA Tour event, but the fear is that some tournaments that need PGA Tour subsidizing will get a hard look as the Tour looks to cut costs and become more profitable.
The Tour’s pension plan has long been lauded as one of the best in sports, with players earning those credits based on performance. A player on the PGA Tour is getting in the neighborhood of $6,000 tax free deposited in a pension fund with that amount doubling once a player reaches 15 made cuts in a year.
By that very simple math, a player such as Scottie Scheffler—who played in and would have been credited with 20 made cuts in 2025—would have had somewhere around $150,000 deposited into his pension fund.
While that might seem relatively small for someone who’s been making $20 million or more on the course in the last few years, it’s pretty significant for a lesser player over a long period of time.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Tiger Woods Could Return to Competition After Latest Back Surgery.
