After tearing his Achilles tendon in March 2025 and undergoing his seventh back surgery in September, Woods was away from the golf courses for all of 2025. Woods is far from being among the elite, although he is still the most recognized athlete in his discipline, a true icon.
Tiger Forest, 50
At the age of 50, Woods was able to compete on the PGA Tour Champions, the circuit reserved for experienced golfers.
“I probably play about 25 tournaments between both tours, and I think that should cover most of the year, right?” Woods joked weeks ago during the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, which he organizes.
The reality is that his last professional appearance was in July 2014 at the British Open, where he missed the cut.
Woods boasts 15 major championships, the 1999 Ryder Cup, 82 PGA titles, 683 weeks as world number one and a streak of 142 tournaments that have made the cut. This impressive record was built on an aggressive and unique playing style, which formed the basis for his resounding victories.
Among them, the 1999 PGA Championship stands out, in which he defeated Sergio Garcia in a match that has gone down in history as one of the greatest in modern golf.
His success on the course had a cultural impact that transformed golf into a fashionable, global sport with huge audiences, accompanied by an economic boom in prize money, contracts and sponsorships.
With Nike – a relationship that ended in 2024 – Woods became the face of golf, with huge contracts and iconic campaigns.
In fact, Woods has achieved great business success and is one of the few athletes to amass a fortune of over $1 billion.
Injuries and scandals
2009 marked a turning point for Woods. After years of absolute dominance, he was involved in a car accident in front of his Florida home on Thanksgiving Day, sparking an infidelity scandal.
The episode led to his divorce, the loss of sponsors and a career hiatus that ended the dominance he had had in golf between 1997 and 2008. After that break, he won just one other major, the 2019 Masters tournament.
In 2017, he was arrested for driving under the influence, and in 2021, he was in a serious car accident in Los Angeles that resulted in multiple fractures to his right leg, requiring complex surgeries and limiting his appearances to a few tournaments.
Recently, Woods has been linked to the Trump family through his relationship with Vanessa Trump, mother of Kai Trump, the US president’s golfing granddaughter.
Mission: Save the PGA
Adding to his uncertain sporting future, Woods, at 50, has taken on the challenge of transforming the PGA to regain fan interest and challenge LIV Golf, the circuit funded by the Saudis.
Woods was recently named chairman of the PGA Tour’s Future Competition Committee, a newly created body charged with designing this transformation, which expects major changes by 2027.
His considerable authority allows him to lead this working group, which aims to improve a product that has suffered a talent drain to the LIV, with the loss of players like Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson.
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