PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — For many years, Tiger Woods’ press conferences were masterclasses in inscrutability that would make a Sphinx proud. These days, he’s more relaxed, quicker to joke, borderline reflective even, but the overall experience is somewhat discordant.
Back then, he was shadowed by an agent or handler, now the upper ranks of the Tour’s flacking operation linger at the back of the room, alert to any inquiries about his chairmanship of the Future Competition Committee that will reshape the entire organization. As a player, Woods has never been less active on Tour — one regular event played in more than five years — yet never more influential in its governance.
The man who never served in any advisory capacity while competing now has a board seat with no expiration on his term while heading the star chamber that will remake a complacent member organization as a cutthroat sports league. It’s Tiger’s tour, even as his clubs gather dust. So it must have come as a tremendous relief to the flak-catchers to see that their man hasn’t lost a step in front of the microphone, based on Tuesday’s performance.
“I thought I spent a lot of hours practicing in my prime. It doesn't even compare to what we've done in the boardroom,” he replied when asked about what’s happening behind closed doors at the Tour’s GloHo. “It's been challenging. We're trying to do the right thing. We're making some great strides. The player directors have been unbelievable with their time and their focus and the depth of knowledge and perspective. Then we've had unbelievable board members that come from all walks of life that are wanting to make our tour better and wanting to make our product better.”
When asked what was wrong with the Tour schedule to necessitate a radical makeover, Woods pointed to a calendar that’s more patchwork than purposeful, one that developed organically but which has never been optimized to fit a focused business objective. Like gaming clubs for which one hasn’t been properly fit.
“We played I think it was La Costa at the time as the Tournament of Champions. Ended sometime after Halloween. So that's a 10-month span of golf. November, December, I think it was considered the silly season,” he said. “We played on the Tour for 10 months. Had an opportunity to play some fun events, some different type of formatted events in November and December, or some of the players like myself would go down to Australia or South Africa and play on their tour. It was just a different landscape than it is now.”
He didn’t judge it better or worse, just different. And long since shelved as unfit for purpose, as the existing schedule will soon be too.
“We're going to get more top players playing and we're going to make it more competitive,” he promised when asked what is coming. “We'll have fewer cards, so that in itself is going to make it more competitive just to be out here.”
“Fewer cards” is the kind of red flag phrasing apt to raise eyebrows in the locker room, where the rank and file already imagines itself squeezed tighter than America’s working class. But when Woods went on to cite the returns of Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed, as well as the rising tide of young talent, he provided context for the pathways and access conversation:
“We're trying to create opportunities for that turnover coming from the PGA Tour-U or Korn Ferry and trying to get more youth out here, because eventually they're going to take over the game. So trying to create that opportunity, trying to create the right competitive model and the environment to foster that's been the greater challenge of it all.”
Shrinking the number of fully exempt players from the current 100 would prompt a pitchfork uprising among the membership, but it’s unlikely that’s what Woods was implying. It’s more probable the Tour will look at bricking up the many back and side doors built for veterans, but off-limits to the next generation. The criteria used for filling regular fields is a veritable DaVinci Code of sops to the old hands — career money list position, past champions status, life members, guys with 300 cuts to their credit. It’s Medicare for the mediocre.
Of course, the real litmus test of just how cutthroat the Tour wants to get is sponsor exemptions, the free pass that matters to established players who find themselves otherwise ineligible for lucrative signature events.
While Woods is busy shaping the future product, it’s unclear when he’ll again be part of it. He was asked how close he is to competing on either the regular or Champions Tour.
“Well, I'm trying, put it that way,” he said.
“The disc replacement has been one thing. It's been a challenge to — I've had a fused back and now a disc replacement, so it's challenging. And now I entered a new decade, so that number is starting to sink in and has us thinking about the opportunity to be able to play in a cart. That's something that, as I said, I won't do out here on this tour because I don't believe in it. But on the Champions Tour, that's certainly that opportunity.”
So, a target date? None.
Has he been cleared to hit full shots by his medical team?
Yes, he answered. “Not well every day, but I can hit them.”
When the conversation returned to his boardroom work, the task of resuming competitive golf seemed less daunting by comparison. “I think it's trying to serve literally everyone, from the player side of it, from our media partners, from all of our title sponsors, from local communities or even changing venues and going to bigger markets,” he explained. “It's what do we need to do from a competitive model to make our tour the best product it can possibly be each and every year and still have room for development? How do we do all of that at the same time?”
No one has ever been more revealing on the 35,000-foot view, and so opaque at ground level.
As things wound down, one answer got the attention of everyone in the room at Riviera Country Club, an inquiry posed so many times over the years after so many surgeries.
Is the Masters off the table for him in 2026?
“No.”
The first round at Augusta National is 51 days away, and Woods deftly gave the fans and media something else to speculate about, other than the work he’s most focused on. Somewhere in the back of the room, the flak-catchers were smiling.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Tiger Woods on PGA Tour changes, health, and Masters 2026