When will Tiger Woods return from injury?

Tiger Woods revealed on Wednesday that he had undergone subtalar fusion surgery to repair his talus bone. The talus is located in the lower ankle joint, and Woods had previously fractured the bone. He needed this second surgery to address the post-traumatic arthritis in the bone, per a statement on his Twitter.

Tiger Woods injury updates

Will Tiger come back for any Majors this year?

Update — We’re closing in on the PGA Championship the weekend of May 18-21 and Woods is not participating in the second Major of the season. There haven’t really been any major updates on Woods recovery from ankle surgery in April.

We can expect that he won’t return for the PGA Championship in late May, given the timing of the April procedure. He will need to keep weight off his foot and will be in a boot or cast for 8-12 weeks following the procedure. If we assume the longer side of that given Woods’ previous injury history in his feet and ankles, 12 weeks places us at mid-July.

The U.S. Open is in June, so we can expect that he may miss that, and the Open Championship begins July 17. Even if he gets the boot off at eight weeks, he would still have to recover and train enough to be prepared for hours of walking, which seems unlikely.

However, it is Tiger Woods, which means that the impossible can become possible. With his declining physical health and visible pain at The Masters this year, though, a fast return seems unlikely.

When will he be back?

If Woods takes the Majors off, he may not return for the rest of the competitive year. In fact, full recovery could take up to an entire year. He did not participate in THE PLAYERS Championship last year, and seems to be focused on playing the majors. The earliest we might see him is at the Hero World Challenge in December, which Woods hosts each year.

We also may not see him return until next year’s Masters Tournament, depending on his pace of recovery, which could take anywhere from six months to a year.