Last Sunday, Justin Thomas finished three straight weeks of tournament golf, his first real stretch since coming back from back surgery. The Florida Swing is over for him now, with a missed cut at Bay Hill, a T8 at The Players, and a T30 at Valspar. After 158 days away from competition, he played 18 days in a row. When asked what helps him get through these stretches, Thomas didn’t hesitate with his answer.

“I feel like that is something that is kind of my superpower and what has given me so much success over my career.”

Thomas made that comment on SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio, explaining his decision to step away and reset. He plans to take more time off before Augusta. He noted progress with his driving in the last two events but said his ball-striking still needs work. He also addressed the challenge of returning after a long layoff.

Recent history supports the claim. Thomas went 1,064 days without a PGA Tour win between the 2022 PGA Championship and April 2025. He later pointed to his own failure to manage internal pressure and rest as the main reason. The streak ended at the 2025 RBC Heritage after he adjusted his approach. Thomas now acknowledges that mismanaging rest came at a clear cost.

“It’s really hard to explain about the feelings of not playing in competition that long and then going back into it and just so many of the little things that you kind of forget about, and honestly just trying to stay focused for five straight hours on difficult golf courses is harder than I remember it.”

Thomas struggled at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, opening with two rounds of 79 and finishing +14. He lost almost four strokes on the greens and missed five putts inside ten feet. He admitted his concentration was gone on the back nine.

“I could not keep my concentration for the life of me on the back nine. I just had a couple of times I had to back off because I just would kind of walk into the shot and have no idea what I was even trying to do.”

At The Players, Thomas opened with two rounds of 68, gained strokes in every category, and finished T8. At Valspar, he posted four under-par rounds for T30. He is now 54th in the FedExCup with 222 points from three starts. Thomas will take several weeks off before Augusta, a reset he used heading into Hilton Head last April, where a more deliberate approach to his schedule ended a 1,064-day winless drought.

The surgery that kept him away for 158 days is one Woods knows well.

Justin Thomas and Tiger Woods: The same surgery, the same road back

Thomas’s November procedure at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York is familiar ground in professional golf. He himself pointed to Tiger Woods, who has undergone the same operation several times. Woods had his first microdiscectomy on March 31, 2014, and returned to competition by June, a decision many considered premature.

Woods missed the cut at the Quicken Loans National on his return. He underwent a second microdiscectomy in September 2015, which ended his season, and a third in October. A fourth procedure was followed in December 2020 to remove a pressurized disk fragment. Each time, the timeline for regaining competitive form was different.

Woods’s 2014 experience mirrors Thomas’s recent result at the API: same surgery, first event back, missed cut. What followed for Woods was never the same twice.

The Florida Swing has been where Thomas’s game typically improves, as shown by his 2021 Players title and a runner-up finish at Valspar in 2025, both achieved at events he played this month. That pattern has partly continued. The next few weeks before Augusta will show if it holds.