Tiger Woods burning desire fuels latest surgery | Golf News

Tiger Woods expressed his longing to “just play golf again” when questioned about a potential return from his latest injury ordeal.

Woods hasn’t participated in a skilled match since The Open Championship in July 2024. The 15-time major winner suffered an Achilles rupture in March and underwent back surgery in October, sparking issues that his time at the top of the game is likely to be drawing to a close.

The 49-year-old confronted reporters on Tuesday at the Hero World Challenge, a match he hosts in The Bahamas. This marked his first public dialogue about his rehabilitation following his most latest setback.

Woods has barely performed since sustaining extreme accidents in a high-speed car accident in 2021.

Numerous questions have been posed about Woods’ recovery and his plans for 2026. His response to inquiries about a potential comeback was revealing, suggesting that his days of common PGA Tour play are behind him.

“Come back to what point? I’d like to come back to just playing golf again,” he confessed. “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.

“So my ardour to just play, I have never accomplished that in a long time. Just play. So I’ve had to sit on the sidelines for a quantity of months, and most of this yr and, fairly frankly, the end of last yr.”

Last week, Woods was given the green light by his doctors to start chipping and putting again, but he admits that the rehab process in the six weeks since his surgery has been “slow” and frustrating.

Woods sidestepped questions about his potential schedule for 2026 and remained undecided about participating in the PGA Tour Champions. He will be eligible to join the senior circuit when he celebrates his 50th birthday later this month.

“It’s not as fast as I’d prefer it to be,” Woods commented on his recovery process. “[The surgery] was a good factor to do, one thing I needed to have occur, and it just takes time and dedication to the rehab course of.

“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 course of before; it is just step by step. Once I get a really feel for working towards, exploding, and enjoying, the recovery course of, then I can assess where I’m going to play and how a lot I’ll play.”

He continued: “[I] cannot actually do a lot. Now we obtained the OK to start cranking up a little bit in the health club, began strengthening and began doing a little bit more of the rotational element that I have never been in a position to do. Just letting the disc sort of set.”

Woods mentioned that his focus has been primarily on his health and his role as a member of the PGA Tour Enterprises board of directors, rather than pondering over playing on the senior tour.

“I do not know. I need time to determine this out with my back and with my physique,” he responded when asked if a comeback on the PGA Tour Champions was a more feasible goal.

“As I start to get more explosive and start to rotate and see what I’ve obtained, then I can discover out or assess what tournaments I may play in, how a lot I ought to play, where I would really like to play.

“I really haven’t gone in depth of what the schedule looks like on the Champions Tour except for a few tournaments. Even our schedule, I’ve been working on our 2027-28 schedule. It’s been not exactly golf based, personally, it’s been about trying to do what’s best for the Tour.”