Newest from Tiger Woods: Well being, PGA Tour-PIF deal and Ryder Cup cash
Tiger Woods is not enjoying on this week’s Hero World Problem, an unofficial match he hosts within the Bahamas.
However the 15-time main champion will nonetheless be concerned within the occasion, and he met with the media Tuesday throughout a pre-tournament information convention. It was the primary time Woods had met with reporters since he missed the lower on the Open Championship at Royal Troon in Scotland in July.
Woods addressed quite a few subjects, together with his well being, his potential enjoying schedule for 2025, golfers being compensated to compete within the upcoming Ryder Cup and the PGA Tour’s ongoing negotiations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund.
Tiger’s well being
Woods is not a part of the 20-man area that may compete this week at Albany golf membership. Final yr, Woods returned from a layoff of greater than seven months to complete 18th at even par, 20 strokes behind winner Scottie Scheffler.
In 2023, Tiger was getting back from surgical procedure to handle post-traumatic arthritis in his proper foot and ankle, which was brought on by accidents he sustained in a automotive wreck in February 2021.
This time, he is recovering from microdecompression surgical procedure in September to alleviate ache from nerve impingement in his decrease again.
“I am not bodily prepared but to compete at this degree,” Woods mentioned. “The occasions I’ve come again right here, I used to be prepared to start out competing and enjoying once more. Sadly, not this time. I nonetheless must preserve coaching to present myself the very best likelihood going into subsequent yr and the occasions forward.”
Woods, 48, did not point out Tuesday when he deliberate to return to aggressive play, saying, “I actually do not know.”
Up to now, he competed along with his son, Charlie, within the PNC Championship, which can happen in Orlando, Florida, in two weeks. In that occasion, Tiger would be capable to use a cart.
In any other case, golf followers won’t see Woods play once more till the Genesis Invitational, which he hosts Feb. 13-16 at Riviera Nation Membership outdoors Los Angeles, or the Masters, the primary main of the season, April 10-13 at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership.
Woods mentioned his again situation prompted ache in his leg that turned progressively worse this previous season. He made solely 5 begins on tour in 2024. He missed three cuts and withdrew from the Genesis Invitational due to sickness.
“I needed to toss [the season] away, and I wasn’t as sharp as I wanted to be and I did not play as a lot as I wanted to going into the key championships, and I did not play properly at them,” Woods mentioned. “Hopefully, subsequent yr will probably be higher. I will be bodily stronger and higher. I do know the process helped, and hopefully that I can then construct upon that.”
Provided that Woods has undergone myriad again surgical procedures prior to now, he was conscious of the lengthy restoration he confronted this time.
“I do know what to anticipate popping out of it,” Woods mentioned. “The reduction I had, I did not have a spasm, I did not have the nerve ache, in order that was unbelievable. However I additionally understood that I nonetheless have an extended highway forward of me of rehab and restoration. I want I hadn’t identified this, however I do know it very properly and I do know the method, I understand how lengthy it should take.
“We’ll proceed doing all of the health club work and proceed doing all of the protocols, and ultimately it is going to result in one thing the place I can compete once more.”
PGA Tour’s potential cope with the Public Funding Fund
It has been practically a yr because the PGA Tour’s framework settlement with the DP World Tour and the PIF expired on Dec. 31, 2023.
There have been indicators of progress in current months, together with a well-publicized assembly between the perimeters in New York in September, and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan enjoying golf with PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan on the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Hyperlinks Championship pro-am in early October.
As a member of the PGA Tour’s coverage board and vice chair of the PGA Tour Enterprises board, Woods has been concerned in negotiations with the PIF a couple of potential funding of greater than $1 billion into PGA Tour Enterprises, the tour’s for-profit wing.
On Tuesday, Woods indicated {that a} deal hasn’t been reached but, admitting that “all of us who’ve been part of this course of would have thought it will have occurred faster than this.”
Woods acknowledged that any settlement between the perimeters will probably be closely scrutinized by the U.S. Division of Justice’s Antitrust Division. It might probably be reviewed by antitrust regulators in Europe as properly.
“Even when we had gotten a deal performed by now, it is nonetheless within the DOJ’s palms, however we want we might have had one thing extra concrete and additional alongside than we’re proper now,” Woods mentioned. “However issues are very fluid, we’re nonetheless working via it, it is taking place every day. From a coverage board standpoint or from an Enterprise standpoint, issues are transferring and so they’re constructive. However sure, undoubtedly transferring.”
Though the perimeters appear to be aligned on many points, sources informed ESPN on Tuesday that crew golf’s place sooner or later ecosystem of the game and precisely how LIV golfers will return to the PGA Tour stay sticking factors.
Final week, Bloomberg reported that the PIF had separate negotiations with the DP World Tour about an alliance that might give LIV Golf gamers entry to DP World Tour occasions. In change, the PIF would make a monetary funding within the European tour.
“This has been a really tough time within the recreation of golf,” Woods mentioned. “I feel that numerous it has been distractions on the great thing about the sport of golf, and clearly we’re attempting to unify that and provides the followers the very best expertise we all know we may give them.”
In the identical information convention Tuesday, Pawan Munjal, CEO of Hero MotoCorp, which sponsors Woods’ match within the Bahamas, expressed frustration that the perimeters have not but struck a deal.
“Very merely put, the sport just isn’t benefiting, the gamers are usually not benefiting,” Munjal mentioned. “Perhaps some on tour. What has to occur is everybody will get again collectively and the sport strikes on, the gamers transfer on, the sponsors transfer on. There’s confusion for the sponsors as properly proper now, what to do, the place to go, how to have a look at the long run. The long run is unsure, which isn’t a very good factor.”
Ryder Cup compensation
Final month, the Telegraph of London reported that U.S. golfers can be paid $400,000 to compete within the Ryder Cup at Bethpage State Park in New York in September 2025.
The PGA of America at present provides every American golfer $200,000 to distribute to the charity of their alternative. The Telegraph did not say whether or not the $400,000 stipend would go to the gamers or charity.
Woods was concerned in comparable discussions with the PGA of America earlier than the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Nation Membership in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Woods mentioned he would not have an issue if golfers have been paid for competing within the Ryder Cup, so long as the cash went to charity.
“We did not need to receives a commission [in 1999], we needed to present extra money to charity, and the media turned it round in opposition to us and mentioned we need to receives a commission,” Woods mentioned. “No, the Ryder Cup itself makes a lot cash, why cannot we allocate it to numerous charities? And what’s fallacious with every participant, 12 gamers getting one million {dollars} and the power to divvy out to wonderful charities that they are concerned in that they will help out?
“It is their hometowns, the place they’re from, all of the totally different junior golf associations or endeavors that the members are concerned in. It is by no means actually been about getting paid; it is how can we allocate funds to assist our sport or assist issues that we consider in again house, as a result of it is so arduous to get onto that crew, there’s solely 12 guys. What’s fallacious with with the ability to allocate extra funds?”
After the Telegraph report, European captain Luke Donald consulted lots of his crew’s golfers about whether or not they need to be paid. Rory McIlroy mentioned the consensus was to donate the cash again to the DP World Tour.
“It is one week the place you play for greater than your self,” Donald informed the Telegraph. “It is … not about cash or factors, it is about coming collectively as a crew and the followers feed off that — it is all ardour. I do not assume we should always ever receives a commission.”
Whatever the European crew’s emotions towards compensation, Woods mentioned he hoped American golfers would get $5 million every and donate it to charity.
“That is high quality, that is their proper to say that,” Woods mentioned. “I simply assume that the occasion is so huge that I feel that we may give a lot cash to totally different charities, and I’ve mentioned that since ’99 once we had the Brookline negotiations. If the Europeans need to pay to be within the Ryder Cup, that is their choice to do this, that is their crew. I do know when it is on European soil that it subsidizes most of their tour, so it’s a huge occasion for the European Tour, and in the event that they need to pay to play in it, so be it.”
