Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Tiger Woods said Friday he’d undergone back surgery aimed at relieving muscle spasms that troubled him in 2024, the 15-time major champion saying he hoped to resume “normal life activities, including golf.” Woods, who turns 49 in December, hasn’t played since he missed the cut at the Open Championship in July.
Playing a limited schedule in 2024 as he continued to deal with injuries sustained in a 2021 car crash, Woods withdrew from the Genesis Invitational because of illness, then finished last among those who made the cut at the Masters. He missed the cut at the PGA Championship and US Open before missing the cut at Royal Troon.
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“The surgery went smoothly, and I’m hopeful this will help alleviate the back spasms and pain I was experiencing throughout most of the 2024 season,” Woods said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “I look forward to tackling this rehab and preparing myself to get back to normal life activities, including golf.”
Woods, who won the last of his 15 majors at the 2019 Masters, said he had “microdecompression surgery of the lumbar spine for nerve impingement in the lower back.” It’s the latest in a string of back procedures for the US superstar, who underwent spinal fusion surgery in 2017 and worked his way back to win the Masters two years later — his first major title since he lifted the US Open trophy in 2008.
In October of 2019, Woods won the inaugural Zozo Championship in Japan to equal Sam Snead’s record of 82 US PGA Tour victories, and in December of that year, he captained and played on the US team that beat the Internationals in the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne.
But since his February 2021 car crash near Los Angeles, which resulted in severe lower leg injuries, Woods has acknowledged that he can play only a limited schedule of not more than one tournament a month. Woods said last February at Riviera that he felt it physically “each and every day,” but added, “I still love competing. I love playing, I love being a part of the game of golf.”
After missing the cut at Troon in July, Woods insisted he had “gotten better” physically. “I just need to keep progressing like that and then eventually start playing more competitively and start getting into kind of the competitive flow again,” he said in Scotland.
In addition to working on his return to form, Woods is among the negotiators trying to hammer out a final merger deal between the US PGA Tour and the LIV Golf League’s financial backers, the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund.
© 2024 AFP
