Justin Thomas is recovering from back surgery for a herniated disk, which he said Friday will forced him to miss the start of next season with no rush to return until he is fully ready.
“It's a bummer, but I don't want to have this stuff bother me the rest of my life,” Thomas said from New York, where he had the surgery on his lower back Thursday.
Doctors told him the surgery went as planned and he would start minor rehabilitation work in about three weeks. He said he could be playing golf in two months, but this is a recovery he's going to take slowly to make sure he doesn't return too soon.
Thomas won the RBC Heritage in April to end a three-year drought and returned to the elite in golf at No. 8 in the world and fourth straight Ryder Cup appearance.
He said the tests that showed a herniated disk in his lower spine surprised him because he didn't feel any pain in his back. He thought there was a nagging issue with his right hip he first noticed in the weeks leading to the Masters.
“It was really weird. I never felt anything in my back,” Thomas said. “I felt fatigued all year. I tried so many different things. Some stuff made it feel better, but nothing that made it go away. I had a good break after the Ryder Cup, and when I came back the symptoms got way worse."
Thomas was scheduled to play in the revived Skins Game in two weeks, the Hero World Challenge the following week and the PNC Championship with his father. He would have started next week at The American Express in the California desert.
Thomas said his immediate instructions are to avoid what he called “BLT” — no bending, lifting or twisting. He said he would miss at least a couple of events to start 2026, but did not want to set a goal for any tournament to avoid any temptation to rush back.
He said he would channel the words of Jim Furyk who once told him, “No one has ever come back from an injury too late.”
Thomas called the option of a cortisone injection to give it time to heal a temporary fix.
“I talked to a bunch of different doctors, and the last thing I ever wanted to do was have surgery," he said. “They said an injection is something a normal working person could do. With what I do, I would have needed to have done it the first three months of feeling symptoms."
The diagnosis at least explained some of the issues he felt on the golf course from his right side, especially when the pain started going down toward his hamstrings.
“I never had to think about setup was much as I have this year,” Thomas said. “My back got very arched, and the very left side was dominant. The more weight I put over there, the less stress on my right side. So that gave me a little bit of clarity. I've never had to be conscious standing over a damn golf ball.”
This will be the second time Thomas has missed time with an injury. He was out for nearly two months in 2019, missing the PGA Championship, waiting for a wrist injury to heal.
Thomas, 32, has won 16 times on the PGA Tour, including two PGA Championship titles.
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf