Tiger Woods health update: No PNC with Charlie, maybe TGL and TBD about majors, PGA Tour or senior golf

Competitive golf is not immediately on the horizon for Tiger Woods as he recovers slowly from October back surgery, bringing into question his prospects for the Masters next April or even his ability to compete in the next few months in the second season of TGL, the simulator golf league he helped found.

Woods, who has not played an official tournament since missing cut in the 2024 Open Championship, said Tuesday at ahead of the Hero World Challenge in Albany, Bahamas, that his recovery from disc replacement surgery Oct. 10 is “not as fast as I would like it to be.

“It was a good thing to do, something I needed to have happen, and it just takes time and dedication to the rehab process.”

Approaching his 50th birthday on Dec. 30, Woods revealed that he was cleared only a few days ago to begin chipping and putting. That means he and his son Charlie will not compete in the upcoming PNC Championship, in which they finished runner-up a year ago after losing a playoff to Bernhard Langer and his son, Jason. Woods added that he probably wouldn’t be able to play for his Jupiter Links team in the simulator league until “maybe … the end of the season here and there, but I don’t know.”

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The TGL regular season ends March 3 with Jupiter Links facing The Bay Golf Club. That would not leave much time for the five-time Masters winner to prepare for the first major championship of the year at Augusta National Golf Club.

“It's been six weeks last Friday. It's been slow,” the 15-time major winner said of the healing process. “Not able to do much on a disc replacement to let it set. Can't really do much. Now we got the OK to start cranking up a little bit in the gym, started strengthening and started doing a little bit more of the rotational component that I haven't been able to do. Just letting the disc kind of set.”

Woods, the host of the Hero World Challenge that begins Thursday, also underwent surgery for a ruptured Achilles tendon in March, and it was during his recovery from that operation that he realized that he needed yet another back surgery—his seventh in an injury-plagued career. Previous to the Achilles surgery, Woods underwent back surgery in September 2024.

As to whether or not he would consider competing on the PGA Tour Champions, Woods joked that, “Yeah, I'm probably going to play probably 25 events on both tours, and I think that should cover most of the year, right?”

He, who has played in only 11 tour events in the last five years, then turned serious. “I'm just looking forward to just let me get back to playing again, let me do that and then I'll kind of figure out what the schedule is going to be. I'm a ways away from that part of it and that type of decision, that type of commitment level.

“Unfortunately, I've been through this rehab process before,” he added. “It's just step by step. 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.”