Zalatoris, whose struggled with back issues with the last three years, had a microdiscectomy and then last year disk replacement following the PGA Championship and didn\u2019t return until November.<\/p>\n
Thomas, who spent much of last year ranked among the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking and won the RBC Heritage, was struggling with hip issues that eventually led him to get testing done.<\/p>\n
![\"Justin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/01kjzqw7x0wn3k37yf2y.jpg\" "\\"Justin")
<\/p>\n
Justin Thomas (left) and Tiger Woods have both had microdiscectomy procedures. | Katie Goodale-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
He never had any debilitating moments with his back or poor play resulting from what he was experiencing, but was told that pain in his hip and the subsequent numbness that sometimes traveled into his leg was back related.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere wasn\u2019t anything [in his back] and that was the hardest part about it,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cIf I would have known, the timeline would have looked very different because I would have had an MRI on my back much sooner, and I would have been in surgery Monday morning after the Ryder Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s weird, it really is. It\u2019s like I had zero back pain during all of this. My back never hurt. I felt like my whole right leg was just, like I couldn\u2019t consistently get it where I wanted it. It was like my right hip, I had a very difficult time consistently loading into it on my backswing. I had a hard time building strength on my right leg and my right hip. I tried, you know, we did everything that felt like I could, and on my end to just not really improve it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen finally after taking some time off after the Ryder Cup it was, it just started to get way more nervy. It was starting to go down my leg more and more, and then that\u2019s when it was kind of like, all right, anything nerve-related we should probably get a MRI on my back and it was yea, no wonder. By the time surgery happened there was tingling on the bottom of my foot kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas smartly took it slow and believes the nearly six-month break he took from competition is the longest \u201csince I was like 7.\u201d He waited until after the first of the year before he did much golf activity and only started hitting drivers a month ago.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Thomas had adjusted his expectations for this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to be rusty in terms of competitive,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, my golf feels really good. I feel like I can do anything I want with the golf ball at any given time, and it\u2019s just going to be the, you know, the concentrating for four and a half, five hours on a very difficult test four days in a row, a lot of the little things that I haven\u2019t done in a long time that I just have to be nice on myself and give myself a little bit of grace. So, yeah, just trying to do that mentally the best that I can this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
More Golf from Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO \u2014 Justin Thomas has seen enough to know. He\u2019s been around Tiger Woods a good bit throughout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-523340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}