Justin Thomas Took His Time Returning From Surgery, but Now He’s Back

The two-time major champion is making his first start of 2026 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, four months after a back procedure.

Justin Thomas is making his 2026 season debut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. | Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images

ORLANDO — Justin Thomas has seen enough to know. He’s been around Tiger Woods a good bit throughout the golfer’s battles with back problems. He’s witnessed the struggles of another young player, Will Zalatoris, who is in the midst of another comeback.

That’s why Thomas, a two-time PGA Championship winner who is back competing this week for the first time since the Ryder Cup, was never going to rush his return.

“My number one thing that I reiterated to everybody is just like we’re not pressing this, we’re not pushing it,” Thomas said Wednesday at the Bay Hill Club, where he is playing his first tournament of the year at the Arnold Palmer Invitational (he opened Thursday with a 7-over 79). “If the timeline is two to four weeks to start rehab, like let’s start at four weeks. If it’s start chipping and putting at four to six weeks, let’s start six weeks.

“Golf is a funny sport where, and we’re fortunate that I can play at a very competitive high level until my mid-to-late 40s, I feel like, and to try to come back a couple events early just because I love Riviera or just because I love Pebble Beach, it doesn’t make sense in terms of over a long career. So it’s just, it’s a lot, a lot of patience.”

Thomas admits that is not necessarily his strongest attribute but he took great pains to make sure he did not do too much too fast. Even to the point of not wanting to lift up his 1-year-old daughter for fear of doing something he should not do.

The winner of 16 PGA Tour events, including the 2021 Players Championship, Thomas had a microdiscectomy for a herniated disk on Nov. 13. Woods, who is recovering from disk replacement surgery in October, had his first microdiscectomy in 2014 and has had four more, plus spinal fusion surgery. Thomas was a frequent visitor with Woods during some of those dark days.

Zalatoris, whose struggled with back issues with the last three years, had a microdiscectomy and then last year disk replacement following the PGA Championship and didn’t return until November.

Thomas, who spent much of last year ranked among the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking and won the RBC Heritage, was struggling with hip issues that eventually led him to get testing done.

Justin Thomas (left) and Tiger Woods have both had microdiscectomy procedures. | Katie Goodale-Imagn Images

He never had any debilitating moments with his back or poor play resulting from what he was experiencing, but was told that pain in his hip and the subsequent numbness that sometimes traveled into his leg was back related.

“There wasn’t anything [in his back] and that was the hardest part about it,” Thomas said. “If I would have known, the timeline would have looked very different because I would have had an MRI on my back much sooner, and I would have been in surgery Monday morning after the Ryder Cup.

“It’s weird, it really is. It’s like I had zero back pain during all of this. My back never hurt. I felt like my whole right leg was just, like I couldn’t consistently get it where I wanted it. It was like my right hip, I had a very difficult time consistently loading into it on my backswing. I had a hard time building strength on my right leg and my right hip. I tried, you know, we did everything that felt like I could, and on my end to just not really improve it.

“Then finally after taking some time off after the Ryder Cup it was, it just started to get way more nervy. It was starting to go down my leg more and more, and then that’s when it was kind of like, all right, anything nerve-related we should probably get a MRI on my back and it was yea, no wonder. By the time surgery happened there was tingling on the bottom of my foot kind of thing.”

Thomas smartly took it slow and believes the nearly six-month break he took from competition is the longest “since I was like 7.” He waited until after the first of the year before he did much golf activity and only started hitting drivers a month ago.

That’s why Thomas had adjusted his expectations for this week.

“I’m going to be rusty in terms of competitive,” he said. “I mean, my golf feels really good. I feel like I can do anything I want with the golf ball at any given time, and it’s just going to be the, you know, the concentrating for four and a half, five hours on a very difficult test four days in a row, a lot of the little things that I haven’t done in a long time that I just have to be nice on myself and give myself a little bit of grace. So, yeah, just trying to do that mentally the best that I can this week.”