Tiger Woods Offers Bleak Assessment of When He Might Return to Golf

After Monday's TGL match, the 50-year-old revealed it will be “some time” before he tees it up again as he recovers from back surgery.

Tiger Woods offered an update after Monday's TGL match, in which his Jupiter Links won. | GREG LOVETT/PALM BEACH POST / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Is Tiger Woods close to teeing it up again?

It doesn’t appear so. 

The 15-time major winner, who is nursing a back injury, gave a bleak assessment of his comeback hopes after Monday night’s TGL match. 

“Playing here in [TGL]? I don't know,” Woods said. “I like watching these guys. As far as competitive golf, it’s still some time.”

The 50-year-old hasn’t played a Tour-sanctioned event since the 2024 British Open. He competed in a few TGL matches last year before tearing his Achilles in March, subsequently ending his season. 

Then, in October, Woods had lumbar disc replacement surgery, aiming to relieve pain and a lack of mobility in the area where he had two microdiscectomy procedures in recent years.

Having turned 50, the 82-time PGA Tour winner is eligible for the PGA Tour Champions, where he can use a cart. There’s speculation he might play on the over-50 circuit, perhaps this summer at one of its major championships.

There’s certainly a lot of anticipation for that, and it could be a good indicator of how his form is. 

“[Woods] already made his legacy. He’s not going to come out [to the PGA Tour Champions] and like, recreate a new legacy,” Stewart Cink told Golf.com. “But I think he would be able to strip it down to its purest form, and that’s just competition, and testing himself out. It would be a good way for him to test out his body and see how things are going, getting ready for some of his other tournaments, majors and whatnot. It would be huge.”

At the Hero World Challenge in December, Woods, who has played only 11 official events since 2022, disclosed that he just begun putting and chipping, but wasn’t yet taking full swings.

“Once I get a feel for practicing, exploding, playing, the recovery process, then I can assess where I'm going to play and how much I’ll play,” Woods said. “I’m a ways away from that part of it and that type of decision, that type of commitment level.”

And roughly two months since those statements, it appears Woods still has a hill to climb before he’s inside the ropes again.