Justin Thomas will miss the start of the 2026 PGA Tour season due to back surgery, he announced Friday afternoon. The two-time major champion posted about the procedure on his personal Instagram account, detailing a microdiscectomy surgery performed on Thursday at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.
This is the first significant injury of Thomas’ career, and the 32-year-old made it clear he’ll take his time and not return until he’s fully ready to do so.
“While I will miss some events in the beginning of 2026, I want to be very smart and patient in letting my disc fully heal so it isn’t an issue again,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas, who last played competitively at the Ryder Cup in late September, explained that he had felt discomfort and nagging hip pain over the last several months, leading his doctors to perform the surgery. A microdiscectomy removes a herniated disk that is pressing on a nerve, which can cause leg pain.
The PGA Tour season begins Jan. 15-18, 2026, at the Sony Open in Hawaii. While the Masters is not until April, the season’s opening months do contain a stretch of signature field events, including the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational.
Thomas is currently ranked No. 20 in the world, per DataGolf. He has been a prominent talent and personality on the PGA Tour since he first earned his card in 2015. He has 16 PGA Tour wins and 89 career top-10 finishes. This year, he won the RBC Heritage in a playoff against Andrew Novak for his first victory since the 2022 PGA Championship.
Before the procedure, Thomas was slated to compete in the Skins Game, a made-for-Amazon Prime golf event set to be contested on Black Friday at Panther National, the course that Thomas designed in Palm Beach, Fla., in collaboration with Jack Nicklaus. It is not immediately known who will replace Thomas alongside Keegan Bradley, Tommy Fleetwood and Xander Schauffele in the exhibition, which is being revived for the first time in 17 years.
Thomas was also committed to play in Tiger Woods’ event, the Hero World Challenge, in the Bahamas in early December. Thomas and his father, Mike, a PGA professional, also typically play together in the PNC Championship, professional golf’s parent-child tournament. The pair won the event in 2020.
