Tiger Woods took full cuts with what looked like a mid-iron on a practice range Tuesday, September 15, 2026 — the first time the 15-time major champion has hit golf balls in public since his March 27 car crash. The swings came at Liberty National Golf Club in New Jersey, at a charity event he hosts, and not at a return to tournament play.
The NEXUS Cup had brought Woods, 50, to the club — an exclusive amateur team event that runs two days and raises money for his TGR Foundation. The tournament has been held since 2019 and traditionally includes a Woods clinic, though his legal situation had made this year’s appearance uncertain.
The TGR Foundation’s live events Instagram account posted the first video of the session, and the PGA Tour reposted it with the caption: “Tiger Woods is back on the range! His last PGA Tour start was July 2024.” Woods put the clip on his own feed as well.
What Woods Told the Clinic Crowd
The master of ceremonies wanted to know how the game was coming along and how many balls he was hitting. “I can hit pretty much anything,” Woods said, repeating the assessment when pressed on his routine. Some stiffness, he explained, was the cost of a late night spent socializing with guests at the event, according to footage shared by golf influencer Tisha Alyn.
Woods rolled his Land Rover SUV on Friday, March 27, on a residential street in Jupiter, Florida, near his home, after he clipped the rear of a trailer that a pickup was towing as the pickup turned into a driveway. The passenger door was how Woods got out of the vehicle, and no injuries were reported for him or for the other driver. Officers then arrested him on suspicion of driving under the influence (DUI).
Alcohol did not show up on a breathalyzer, which registered zero, and Woods told officers he had not had a drink that day. He passed the breath test but declined a urinalysis screening for other drugs, Martin County Sheriff John Budensiek said, adding that investigators believed the cause might have been medication he had taken. Woods showed signs of impairment but did not appear injured, the sheriff said. According to the initial police affidavit, he was sweating heavily, lethargic and slow, with bloodshot, glassy eyes. Two pain pills were found in his pocket after the crash, according to a sheriff’s office report.
Police released body camera footage of the crash that shows Woods leaning on one knee, calmly explaining what happened. “I looked down at my phone, and all of a sudden, boom,” he says in the video. Officers told him they suspected his “normal faculties” were impaired by an “unknown substance.” Asked about prescription medication, Woods answered that he took a few, and that he had taken them earlier that morning. A statement he issued afterward said he was stepping away for a period of time to “seek treatment and focus on my health,” per the statement. He stayed almost entirely out of public view in the months that followed, traveling to Switzerland for rehab in the spring.
The range session came nearly two weeks after his case ended. He entered a no-contest plea on Wednesday, September 2, at the Martin County Courthouse in Florida, on two counts: willful, wanton and reckless driving, and refusing to submit to a urine test. The DUI charge was dropped under the agreement. A written not-guilty plea from his attorneys had earlier answered counts of DUI, property damage and test refusal.
The driving count drew a fine of $1,000, and the refusal another $500, plus two concurrent five-year suspensions of his driver’s license. A defendant entering a no-contest plea admits no guilt and mounts no defense, yet the court records the outcome as a conviction. His girlfriend, Vanessa Trump, once a daughter-in-law to President Donald Trump, went with him to the courthouse and sat behind him in a mostly empty courtroom. The suspensions do not reach the fairways: he is still allowed to drive a cart on the golf course, at least in Florida.
The Injuries That Forced the Layoff
His 15 major titles break down as five Masters, four PGA Championships, three U.S. Opens and three Open Championships, and he has 82 career PGA Tour victories. He won his last major at the 2019 Masters at Augusta National, and the 2019 Zozo Championship gave him his last title of any kind. Royal Troon staged his most recent PGA Tour start, the 2024 Open Championship, where he missed the cut.
Injuries have run his calendar for years. A separate car crash in 2021 left him with severe lower right leg injuries. Seven operations have been performed on his back, the most recent a disk replacement in October 2025 to address pain and mobility problems. He is also working back from a torn Achilles tendon, which came up alongside the disk replacement surgery when he was asked about his game at the September 15 clinic. He sat out the 2026 Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and Open Championship. Before Liberty National, he had last struck a golf ball in public in March, playing for his Jupiter Links team in the indoor TGL final.
Where He Goes From Here
Nothing competitive is on his schedule, and he offered no timetable for a return. His 50th birthday came in December 2025, and that makes him eligible for the over-50s PGA Tour Champions, a circuit where players are permitted to use golf carts in competition. Speculation has also pointed to December’s PNC Championship, the parent-child event he has played five times with his son, Charlie Woods; John Daly and John Daly II beat the two of them into second place as the winning father-and-son team at the 2021 edition.
Woods also got a look, through the NEXUS Cup, at a course with tour golf in its future. The 2027 BMW Championship goes to Liberty National as the penultimate event of the 2027 FedExCup season; the club previously staged the 2017 Presidents Cup and a FedExCup Playoffs event in 2019. November 30 to December 6 are the dates set for the Hero World Challenge, which Woods hosts in the Bahamas.
