Tiger Woods suffered a back obstacle, revealing on Tuesday that he recently underwent a fifth surgery that will prevent him from starting the year until after the West Coast Swing in the PGA Tour.
Woods will not play next week at the Farmers Insurance Open in Torrey Pines, which he won seven times, most recently in 2013. He also won the US Open in 2008 at Torrey Pines, which hosts the US Open again in June.
He will also miss Genesis Invitational on February 18-21 at the Riviera, where he will host the tournament.
In a statement from its TGR Foundation, which Woods also posted on Twitter, did not say when he underwent microdiscetomy. To remove a fragment of a pressurized disc that gave him nervous pain during last month’s PNC championship, which he played with Charlie’s 11-year-old son.
Doctors said the operation was a success and predicted a full recovery, according to the statement.
“I’m looking forward to starting training and I’m concentrating on coming back to the tournament,” Woods said.
The year Woods last won at the Torrey Pines is when the back problems started to appear. He had his first microdisectomy just before the 2014 Masters, then he had two more in September and October 2015.
The fourth operation in April 2017 was a major one, to merge its lower column. Woods’ return was successful, leading to a victory in the 2018 Tournament – his first in five years – and he managed to win the Masters in 2019, his 15th major and his first in 11 years.
When he won the Zozo Championship in Japan in the fall of 2019, he matched the record for Sam Snead’s 82nd career victory, and the record seemed to be just a matter of time. But he was never in a serious fight all last year and missed an entire month with a minor side issue before the gulf was closed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
When he returned in July, he finished no better than a 37th-place tie at the PGA Championship in seven tournaments he played. In six of those events in which he made the cut, he finished a total of 107 shots from the lead.
He turned 45 at the end of last year, and the number of operations is now up to 10 – five on his left knee, five on his back.
Woods said after tying for 38th place in his master’s degree defense that he has harder days than others.
“My body has moments when it just doesn’t work the way it used to,” he said in November. “No matter how hard I try, things don’t work the way they used to, and no matter how much I push and ask this body, it doesn’t work sometimes. Yes, it is more difficult than others to be motivated sometimes.
“Yeah, because things just hurt and I have to deal with things I’ve never dealt with before.”
He played the PNC Championship with his son and they finished in seventh place.
Woods plans to be at the Riviera in his role as host of the tournament. The statement only said he would miss Torrey Pines and Riviera. He has not been as predictable with his schedule in recent years that led to the Masters on April 8-11.
The recent World Golf Championships in Mexico has moved to Florida and is followed by West Coast Swing. Then there’s Bay Hill, where Woods has won eight times (all before his back-to-back operations), but he’s also been in The Players Championship for the past two years. There are three more Masters tournaments left.