The sense of wonder that followed Tiger Woods from his first professional tournament – that memorable, if orchestrated, “I guess, hello world, huh?” moment ahead of his PGA Tour debut in 1996 – through a legendary career that garnered 15 major titles continues to live on; even if, as he turns 50 years of age, there remain doubts as to how much competitive golf is left in a body battered and bruised by numerous surgical interventions.
As he celebrates the big 5-0 birthday – born on December 30th, 1975 – the questions about his fitness hang over him, with no date set for any imminent return to the tour, even if those at the Champions Tour, that circuit for the seniors who turn 50, are looking and hoping that their schedule – where carts are permitted and many tournaments are of 54 holes – will provide a pathway back.
Woods underwent spinal surgery in October, his second of the year and seventh in a decade in various attempts to counter back pain. The latest surgery on his lumbar spine was deemed successful, although the rehabilitation has proven to be a slow one.
In the way of the world, Woods announced that surgery in October on X: “After experiencing pain and lack of mobility in my back, I consulted with Doctor and Surgeons to have tests taken. The scans determined that I had a collapsed disk in L4/5, disc fragments and a compromised spinal canal. I opted to have my disc replaced yesterday, and I already know I made a good decision for my health and my back.”
More recently, speaking at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, Woods elaborated slightly without committing to any immediate return (which, if and when it happens, is likely to be in the TGL indoor series where he is the main man on Jupiter Links): “It’s not as fast as I’d like it to be. It was a good thing to do, something I needed to happen, it just takes time and dedication to the rehab process … unfortunately I’ve been through this rehab process before and it’s step by step.
“You can’t really do much with a disc replacement, now we have the okay to start cranking it up in the gym and start strengthening,” he added at the time.
In the real world, things do take time. And Woods – who also had surgery on a ruptured Achilles’ tendon earlier in the year – has learned that patience and rehabilitation work in tandem.
There was, too, the single car crash in February 2021 that necessitated major knee surgery. He has been through the wringer so many times and has always found a way back.
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Will we see another “hello world” moment? Even if one where that boyhood innocence of his Nike scripted remarks ahead of the Greater Milwaukee Open in 1996 are, some three decades further on, replaced by the realities of what he has come through in a career that saw him become the first billionaire golfer and a sporting icon.
Tiger Woods speaks to the media after the third round of his professional debut at the Greater Milwaukee Open in 1996. Photograph: JD Cuban/Getty Images
Woods won $2,544 (€2,159) for his first pay-day as a professional in Milwaukee and, the following year, won his first of 15 majors when he captured the Masters at Augusta National. His most recent major title came in a spectacular return to form also at Augusta in 2019 for a fifth green jacket.
However, Woods’s golf sightings of recent years have been scarce, confined to last year’s outings on the TGL. The last major championship he played was at Royal Troon in 2024.
These days, Woods is ranked 2,563rd in the official world rankings, although, in truth, that is but a number given that his competitive outings have been so curtailed by injuries and surgeries. In emphasising his career dominance, the bigger number is that of how long he held the world number one ranking: a combined 683 weeks in his career. For context, Greg Norman at number two in those all-time figures held it for a combined 331 weeks.
So, what does the future hold?
Everyone in golf would hope that some version of Woods can re-emerge to play again competitively. As the man himself observed at that Hero World Challenge – which he hosted but didn’t play in – there is an inner desire, citing “my passion to just play … I’d like to come back to just playing golf again”.
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For now, most of us would just like to see him play again, pain-free, and on occasions perhaps managing to show glimpses of his old self. Photograph: David Cannon/ Getty Images
He added: “Once I get a feel for practising, exploding, playing, the recovery process, then I can assess where I’m going to play and how much I’ll play. I’m a way away from that part of it and that type of decision, that type of commitment level.”
In turning 50, given the amount of surgical intervention over the years, on back and knees primarily, that pathway to continue playing competitively is most likely to occur on the Champions Tour. And, if that does happen, it would be a game-changer for the seniors circuit, just as his arrival on the golfing circuit all those years ago created the prize funds for tournaments beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
For now, most of us would just like to see him play again, pain-free, and on occasions perhaps managing to show glimpses of his old self.
Tiger Woods in numbers
15 major championships won, second only to Jack Nicklaus (18) on the all-time list.
5 Masters titles, also second behind Nicklaus’s six.
3 Woods has won four US PGA Championship titles and the Open Championship and US Open three times each, meaning he is a career Grand Slam winner three times over. That achievement is matched by Nicklaus – the pair are the only players to win each major multiple times, and two of only six to complete a career slam.
4 Woods held all four majors simultaneously after adding the 2001 Masters to his US Open, Open and US PGA wins the previous year. He is the only man to achieve that feat, which became known as the “Tiger Slam”.
82 PGA Tour wins in Woods’s career, level with Sam Snead for the most ever with Nicklaus third on 73. Woods has 110 wins across all tours.
Tiger Woods receives the Masters green jacket for winning the 1997 Masters Tournament from 1996 winner Nick Faldo at Augusta. Woods won the tournament with a record eighteen-under-par. Photograph: Jeff Haynes/AFP via Getty Images
120,999,166 career earnings in US dollars from PGA Tour events, an all-time record. Rory McIlroy sits in second place, just over $13 million behind Woods, with Scottie Scheffler on the verge of becoming the third $100 million earner.
683 weeks spent at world number one, including 264 in succession from August 1999 to September 2004 – both all-time records.
15 Woods’s 15-stroke margin of victory at the 2000 US Open, when he was the only player under par, remains a major championship record. He also won the 1997 Masters by 12 and is the only player since 1899 with a double-figure winning margin in a major.
61 Woods’s lowest competitive round, achieved on four separate occasions. His best in a major is 63, in the second round as he won the 2007 US PGA.
Tiger Woods walks up to the 18th hole during the 100th US Open at the Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. Photograph: Jamie Squire/ Allsport
3 Woods has hit three hole-in-ones in his PGA Tour career, at the 1996 Greater Milwaukee Open, 1997 Phoenix Open, and 1998 Sprint International, and is reported to have made 20 in his life.
66 Consecutive rounds of par or better from the 2000 GTE Byron Nelson Classic to the 2001 Phoenix Open, including a record 52 in PGA Tour events.
7 Consecutive wins in PGA events entered from the 2006 Open Championship to the 2007 Buick Invitational. Only Byron Nelson has a longer winning streak, 11 events in 1945.
39 Woods has only missed the cut in 39 of his 382 PGA Tour events, less than half of his win total.
1 Woods has lost only one of his 12 career playoffs, to Billy Mayfair at the 1998 Nissan Open.
91 holes played by Woods to win the 2008 US Open, where he saw off Rocco Mediate in an 18-hole playoff which needed a sudden-death 19th hole – while Woods was playing with a torn ACL and a double stress fracture of his left tibia.
