Woods undergoes fifth back surgery, to miss two events

Tiger Woods has undergone a fifth back surgery that has put the start to his new year on hold. Woods did not say when he had the microdiscetomy, only that doctors deemed it a success and expect a full recovery. He will miss two tournaments he normally plays in Southern California — the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines and the Genesis Invitational at Riviera. Woods still plans to be at Riviera as the tournament host. He says the surgery was to remove a pressurized disc fragment that was giving him nerve pain last month when he played the PNC Championship with 11-year-old son Charlie.

Woods has won the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines seven times, most recently in 2013. He also won the U.S. Open in 2008 at Torrey Pines, which hosts the U.S. Open again in June.

“I look forward to begin training and am focused on getting back out on tour,” Woods said.

The year Woods last won at Torrey Pines is when back problems began to surface. He had his first microdisectomy right before the 2014 Masters, and then he had two more in September and October of 2015.

The fourth surgery in April 2017 was a major one, to fuse his lower spine.

Woods’ return was successful, leading to a victory in the 2018 Tour Championship — his first in five years — and he capped it off by winning 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 tied Sam Snead’s career victory record with No. 82, and the record seemed to be only a matter of time. But he was never in serious contention all of last year and missed a full month with a minor back issue before golf was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.

When he returned in July, he didn’t finish better than a tie for 37th at the PGA Championship in seven tournaments he played. In six of those events where he made the cut, he finished a combined 107 shots out of the lead.

He turned 45 at the end of last year, and his surgery count is now up to 10 — five on his left knee, five on his back.

Woods said after he tied for 38th in his Masters title defense that he has days that are harder than others.

“My body just has moments where it doesn’t work like it used to,” he said in November. “No matter how hard I try, things just don’t work the way they used to. It is more difficult because things just ache and I have to deal with things I’ve never had to deal with.”