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Jordan Spieth sets goal to return for start of 2025 PGA TOUR season

Published

3 months ago

September 17, 2024

Jordan Spieth is aiming to return to the PGA TOUR by the start of the 2025 season, he told Golfweek in a Q&A published on Monday. Spieth underwent surgery in August to repair ulnar nerve damage in his left wrist.

“I think that by 2025, by Jan. 1, it’s my goal to be tournament-ready,” Spieth told Golfweek. “And for me, that would be not just going out and seeing how it feels, you know, but expecting to play at my ceiling.”

Spieth made his first public appearance since his surgery on Monday, attending a junior golf event at Brookhaven Country Club just outside Dallas. His left wrist was wrapped in a cast.

Spieth has dealt with wrist issues since May 2023, when he injured it while playing with his son Sammy. He resisted surgery at the time, opting for a rest-and-recovery strategy, but it never fully healed. Spieth re-aggravated the injury last fall while reaching for a toaster in his home and was diagnosed with ulnar nerve damage shortly after.

He felt better to begin 2024, but the pain grew as the season wore on. He nearly withdrew during the first round of the RBC Heritage in April after a tendon in his wrist “popped out” while hitting a greenside bunker shot. He told PGATOUR.COM, “I thought I was done for the week,” but he was able to pop the wrist back into place and finish.

He carded just three top-10s, a career-low, and missed eight cuts, a career-high in 2024. Spieth’s season ended at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, where he failed to qualify for the top 50.

By the end of the year, surgery was “inevitable,” Spieth revealed in the Q&A.

“I would say the No. 1 reason why I ended up getting it done was because it affects my way of life at home,” he said. “Like when it would dislocate and I couldn’t get it back in, it would happen when I’m getting my daughter out of the bath, I’m putting a sweatshirt on or it just so random that it was like, I didn’t want it to continue, and it happened more and more. And it wasn’t going to heal itself based on a number of different docs and scans and whatever. So it’s just inevitable.”