Two-time major winner Justin Thomas will miss the beginning of the 2026 PGA Tour season after undergoing back surgery, he announced Friday.
“Life update – I’ve had some nagging hip pain for a handful of months,” Thomas said in a statement posted on social media. “After some time off and worsening symptoms, an MRI showed I had a disc problem that needed to be treated.”
Thomas underwent a successful microdiscectomy at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York on Thursday and has already been released from the hospital, he said.
The 32-year-old, who is ranked eighth in the Official World Golf Ranking, won the 2025 RBC Heritage (his 16th career PGA Tour victory) and had eight top-10 finishes this year.
Thomas was scheduled to play in the Hero World Challenge from Dec. 4-7 as well as the Skins Game the Friday after Thanksgiving. READ MORE
Julio Aguilar, Getty Images
Harbour Town Golf Links, designed by Pete Dye with Jack Nicklaus working alongside him in his first venture into the course-design business, has long been considered a classic layout, running through the Lowcountry live oaks and alongside the Calibogue Sound in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
So when it came time to give the longtime host of the PGA Tour’s RBC Heritage tournament its first substantial makeover in 25 years, it fell to Davis Love III – who has won the Heritage five times – to enhance and modernize the layout without sacrificing the strategic brilliance Dye built into the course.
Mission accomplished. The refreshed version of Harbour Town reopened last week looking and playing every bit the way Dye imagined it would more than 50 years ago. READ MORE
The LPGA’s first major of the season, the Chevron Championship, will shift sites in 2026, moving to Houston’s Memorial Park Golf Course from the Club at Carlton Woods, where it has been staged the last three years, Golfweek first reported.
The tournament, slated for April 23-26, will be held one month after the PGA Tour’s Texas Children’s Houston Open at Memorial Park, the report said. The event moved to Texas in 2023 after being played for 51 years at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California. READ MORE
Tap-Ins
Miyu Yamashita clinched the LPGA’s 2025 Louise Suggs Rolex Rookie of the Year award after a 68th-place finish at The Annika driven by Gainbridge at Pelican on Sunday. READ MORE
Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler have set the teams for the Golf Channel Games, a prime-time skills challenge slated for Dec. 17, it was announced last Monday. McIlroy’s team will include Luke Donald, Shane Lowry and Haotong Li, while Scheffler’s squad will include Keegan Bradley, Sam Burns and Luke Clanton. READ MORE
A new PGA Tour event, the Biltmore Championship in Asheville, is set to debut in 2026 during the tour’s FedExCup Fall, it was announced last Monday. Biltmore Estate and Explore Asheville will serve as co-title sponsors of the first PGA Tour event in Asheville, North Carolina, in more than 80 years, slated for Sept. 17-20 at the Cliffs at Walnut Cove. READ MORE
The LPGA elected four new members of its board of directors: Former Federal Trade Commission chair Deborah Majoras, sports and media executive Sean Bratches, and tour players Lindy Duncan and Lauren Coughlin. Board chair John Veihmeyer will retire at the end of the year and be succeeded by Madeleine Kleiner. READ MORE
Compiled by Mike Cullity