For golfers, things may linger after a back surgery, and their confidence might be shaky. After all, back surgeries tend to recur. We have seen this happen with a couple of pros, but Justin Thomas hopes November 13 was his first and last. As he is set to return to competitive golf, his back is giving him a positive signal, with pain in other places, and he is not complaining.

“You never know what’s going to happen or what could happen. I mean, I’m sure they feel the same way I do. I mean, I hope that this is never an issue again, right? It’s one of those things you just maybe have to be a little bit more diligent on a couple of things here and there. But I did everything I possibly could for three months to get this to heal, to recover, as well as I felt like I could have,” Thomas said at Bay Hill.

“And try to get myself back to a good place and a place where I was not hitting golf shots or whatever in any fear of anything. So I feel good about that. Obviously, everybody keeps asking me how I’m feeling, and I’ve been joking, but it’s true; I must be feeling better because other stuff’s starting to hurt again, so I feel like I’m pretty much back to normal.”

JT’s ‘good pain’ is actually a very important sign, as when an athlete suffers from a severe, chronic injury, like the nerve-related disc issue JT suffered, the intense primary pain often shadows or drowns out all other minor aches. Take Tiger Woods or Will Zalatoris, for instance.

Zalatoris underwent a microdiscectomy, felt 100% for a brief window, and, again, the injury suddenly returned. The same things have happened with Woods. The 15x major winner once admitted that during his toughest years, he really couldn’t tell the difference in his drop-off because he simply lived it from day to day until surgery finally allowed him to feel the difference. Zalatoris similarly described a nightmare of three years where he was so locked up that he had to try to hide the limp while competing.

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For Thomas, who battled through nagging hip pain and fatigue throughout 2025, the return of regular soreness is a positive sign. After his microdiscectomy in November, Thomas was placed under strict “BLT” restrictions, which meant he couldn’t bend, lift, or twist his body for several weeks, and he had to skip the start of the 2026 season to heal. Throughout the whole journey from a hospital bed back to the tee box, JT shared health updates on Instagram.

The early days were unimaginably boring for him as he couldn’t do anything. But with time, he recovered, and around January, the 32-year-old shared clips of his working with resistance bands and gradually moving to chipping and putting. Then, in early February, he finally got the green light to play full golf again.

Despite Thomas’s diligence, uncertainty remains, as several professional golfers have seen back issues return even after successful procedures. After his first microdiscectomy in 2014, Tiger Woods has faced a cycle of seven procedures, including a recent disc replacement in 2025. Zalatoris microdiscectomy in 2023 also required a more invasive disc replacement in later years. And several others, like Jason Day and Fred Couples, also share the same fate.

That’s why some experts still worry about JT’s return to the Tour.

Ryan Lavner warns Justin Thomas

Golf insider Ryan Lavner recently shared some big worries. Lavner compared this situation to Xander Schauffele’s rib injury from a previous PGA Tour season. Schauffele took two months off but struggled badly when he finally played under real pressure. He shot rounds of 77 and 81 at The Players Championship after his long break. Lavner fears that tournament adrenaline might force JT to use some old habits.

“It reminds me a little of what happened with Xander Schauffele. It’s not a perfect comparison because Xander didn’t need surgery, and it was his rib, not his back. But remember, he played Kapalua, then took off for about two and a half months before returning during the most difficult stretch of the Florida swing,” said Ryan Lavner in an episode of the Golf Channel Podcast.

“By all accounts, Justin Thomas has taken his time with this microdiscectomy. It’s the first time he’s really dealt with an injury concern. He has no limitations and has had no setbacks in his recovery. I hope, for his sake, that he’s injury-free and can play pain-free the rest of 2026.”

Justin Thomas himself knows this better than anyone else. That’s why, though he is eyeing a strong comeback, he is not expecting too much from himself at the moment.

As JT noted, “I obviously want to and would love to play well next week, but I’m also understanding that it’ll be, what, almost five or six months since I’ve played a competitive tournament, so I’m not exactly expecting anything great. But at least everybody else will be struggling with me at Bay Hill, so that’ll make me feel a little bit better hopefully.”