"Nobody has asked me" Tiger's shocking Ryder Cup captaincy revelation

Tiger Woods hits his shot from a bunker on the 11th hole during the second round of the 2022 PGA Championship at the Southern Hills on May 20, 2022 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Photo by Darren Carroll/PGA of America)

Tiger Woods has no date set for his playing return after back surgery but it was still a surprise to hear him admit that he has not been asked about being US Ryder Cup captain in Adare in 2027.

The 15-time major winner (49) confessed that he’s making a slower than hoped for recovery after undergoing disk replacement surgery in October and cannot yet commit to a playing schedule in 2026.

But after watching the USA lose the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black and spoken to the players and the backroom team, he revealed ahead of the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas that he has not been approached about captaining the American team in Co Limerick.

“No one's asked me about it,” said Woods, who reiterated his stance when asked about doing a job he reportedly turned down at Bethpage Black. “No one's asked me about it.”

He added: “I watched pretty much all of it and was talking to the players and the captains involved in it, everyone involved on the US side.”

Woods is focussed on his fitness and his role as chairman of the Future Competition Committee, which is looking to radically reshape the PGA TOUR schedule as soon as the 2027-28 season.

“It’s not as fast as I’d like it to be,” he said of recovery from his seventh back surgery. It was a good thing to do, something I needed to happen, it just takes time and dedication to the rehab process.

“Unfortunately I’ve been through this rehab process before and it’s step-by-step. Once I get a feel for the recovery process, I can decided where and when to play.

“Let me get back to playing again, let me do that and I’ll figure out the schedule. I just got cleared last week to chip and putt.

“It’s been six weeks last Friday (since the operation) and it’s been slow.

“You can’t really do much with a disc replacement, now we have the OK to start cranking it up in the gym and start strengthening.”

Woods is hosting the $5m Hero World Challenge, which starts in the Bahamas on Thursday with world number one Scottie Scheffler and US Open champion JJ Spaun the top-ranked players in the 20-man field.

While he hasn’t played an official event since The Open at Royal Troon in 2024 and won’t be playing the PNC Championship in two weeks, he remains determined to make a comeback.

“My passion to just play, I haven’t done that in a long time and it’s been a tough year,” he said. “I’ve had to sit on the sidelines for a number of months of this year and the end of last year. I’d like to come back to just playing golf again.”

He turns 50 on December 30 but could make no commitment to playing events on the PGA TOUR Champions as his playing future remains unclear.

“I need time to figure this out with my back and with my body,” he said. “As I start to get more explosive and start to rotate and see what I've got, then I can find out or assess what tournaments I could play in, how much I should play, where I would like to play.

“I really haven't gone in depth of what the schedule looks like on the Champions Tour except for a few tournaments.

“Even our schedule, I've been working on our '27-'28 schedule. It's been not exactly golf based, it’s been personally golf based, it's been about trying to do what's best for the Tour…

“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 and

what does that look like.”

Getting the US product right is the priority.

“We’re trying to create, yes, other global opportunities for our players, for other tours to enhance their tours, enhance their product, but I think it all starts with the best tour on the planet, which is ours,” Woods added.

Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, returns to action in the Crown Australian Open at Royal Melbourne, where the winner will get a spot in the Masters and the leading three non-exempt players who make the cut will qualify for The 154th Open at Royal Birkdale.

On the DP World Tour, Tom McKibbin joins the likes of Viktor Hovland and Marco Penge in the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Gary Player Country Club in Sun City.