Tiger Woods won’t compete in the PNC Championship later this month. In fact, he still doesn’t have a timetable for when he hopes to return to any competition, whether it’s on the PGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions or even indoors with TGL.
Woods met with the media Tuesday ahead of the Hero World Challenge, the tournament he hosts annually in the Bahamas. He is just seven weeks removed from Oct. 10 disc replacement surgery on his lumbar spine, his second back operation in about a year following September 2024 micro-decompression surgery.
“It’s not as fast as I’d like it to be,” Woods said of his rehab, which progressed to chipping and putting just last week.
“Can’t really do much,” he added. “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. … A disc replacement takes time. It’s not as long as a fusion, thank God, but it’s going to take time.”
Woods, who also had surgery to repair a ruptured left Achilles tendon last March, hasn’t competed since his last TGL match on March 4. His last regular golf tournament came at last year’s PNC Championship, where he and his teenage son, Charlie, finished runner-up. Before his latest back surgery, Woods was seen hitting wedge shots at an early September event at Liberty National, but then his back started to feel “wonky” and a subsequent MRI “didn’t look very good.”
![Vice captain, Tiger Woods on the course during the 2016 Ryder Cup, Friday morning play at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, with foursomes competition. ] 2016 Ryder Cup, Hazeltine National Golf Club. Chaska, MN 9/30/16 JERRY HOLT j](https://assets.golfchannel.com/dims4/default/763b62f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4200x2360+0+220/resize/500x281!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnbc-sports-production-nbc-sports.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F5f%2Fa5%2F2cc238cf4204991987a4da66cc14%2Fhttps-delivery-gettyimages.com%2Fdownloads%2F1156760761)
Asked if he’d considered teaming with Charlie but not hitting full shots, Woods quickly dismissed that idea.
“No, it wouldn’t be fair,” Woods said. “Not only it wouldn’t be fair to my son, but it wouldn’t be fair to another team that could play and could have that experience that we’ve had for a number of years.”
Woods will celebrate his 50th birthday on Dec. 30, meaning he’ll be eligible to compete on the senior circuit in 2026. While Woods admitted he’s looked at a few tournaments on the upcoming PGA Tour Champions schedule, he’s not gone in depth on mapping out what events, if any, he’ll play. He didn’t address a target PGA Tour event, either, though he did share that while he’ll miss the first part of the TGL season, he’d love to return to the simulator before the end of the season, which culminates in mid-March.
“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,” Woods said. “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, 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…
“I’d like to come back to just playing golf again. I haven’t played golf in a long time. It’s been a tough year. I’ve had a lot of things happen on and off the golf course that’s been tough.
“And so, my passion is to just play; I haven’t done that in a long time.”