Tiger Woods has entered the next phase of his career, and it could be the most consequential to golf’s future.
Two questions into his first media availability in 10 months at the Hero World Challenge, Woods was asked about what his 2026 schedule could look like, especially being eligible for the 50-and-over PGA Tour Champions.
“I’m probably going to play probably 25 events on both tours,” Woods said, “and I think that should cover most of the year, right?”
Woods then grinned. Clearly, he was joking.
The 15-time major champion's annaul chat with the media at Albany Golf Club carries a déjà vu feeling. He's been part-time player these past few years, and the public hasn’t heard directly from him in several months. It's generally been unclear when he might tee it up again, and that remains the case after this week's press conference.
Woods, 49, underwent lumbar disc replacement surgery in October and was only recently cleared to chip and putt. Yes, he’s mounting a return to golf, but he essentially conceded that he’s not expecting to win majors. Instead, he’d “like to come back to just playing golf again.”
Therefore, Woods’s latest comments introduced a new reality: his focus is more on being an administrator than a competitor.
After Brian Rolapp assumed the role of PGA Tour CEO this summer (Woods was part of the search team that hired him), he introduced the Future Competition Committee, with Woods as chairman. The goal of the nine-person council is to “undertake a comprehensive review of the current competitive model and shape the future of Tour competition.” The three themes? Parity, scarcity and simplicity.
And so Woods’s work in reshaping the sport has begun.
“I think we’ve [the FCC] had three different meetings,” he said, “we’ve got one coming up here. We’ve torn down and looked at so many different models. It’s been a lot. We’ve talked to title sponsors, we talked to CMOs, we talked to tournament directors, we talked to media partners, we've talked to a lot of different people and taken a lot in of what they would like to see.”
The objective, to quote Roalpp directly, is not incremental change; it’s significant change. The first part in achieving that appears to be tweaking the schedule.
Recently, five-time Tour winner Harris English hinted that the circuit could start after the Super Bowl. Woods neither confirmed nor denied that possibility.
“We’re trying to figure out what is the best schedule possible so we can create the best fields and have the most viewership and also the most fan involvement,” Woods said. “Looking at different timetables of when we start and finish, different tentpoles throughout the year and what that might look like.”
That would eliminate the Tour going head-to-head with the PGA Tour with the NFL, which Woods notes is “this thing with ‘the Shield’ that’s out there that’s influential.” If anyone knows the NFL’s power as a business model, it’s Rolapp, who left his position as the NFL’s chief media and business officer to join the Tour.
Woods has been around long enough to remember when the season bled into November. Now, the regular season concludes before Labor Day.
Will Woods push to honor tradition or make major changes?
Having lived and played through multiple generations of the PGA Tour, that perhaps makes Woods an ideal person to captain the committee—along with the fact that he’s Tiger Woods.
However, there’s a tightrope to walk. Uphold the traditions that molded Woods into the global superstar he is today, or help facilitate a complete overhaul of the Tour, with changes beginning as early as 2027.
“That is again one of the different concepts we’re looking at as well, rip the Band-Aid off, create a whole new product, do it staged,” Woods said. “But this is one of the reasons why we’ve talked to all of our partners, why we talked to all of the CMOs, CEOs, everyone who’s involved in the game to get their opinion on what would they like to see and it’s up to us at the committee level to try and figure that out.”
Since “Hello world,” Woods revolutionized the PGA Tour both culturally and financially with his talent. Now, despite rarely swinging a club inside the ropes, he’s a vital part in determining how the sport will operate in the ensuing decades.
It’ll all be part of his legacy.
More Golf from Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Tiger Woods Is Still Shaping His Legacy.
