Tiger Woods went months without a public word. On Tuesday, he broke the silence on video, for a friend.
Woods surfaced on The Golf Channel broadcast to congratulate his former Stanford teammate Notah Begay III on the 2026 Payne Stewart Award. He was not in the room at the Atlanta ceremony. His tribute was pre-recorded.
“It’s been an unbelievable ride with you. You first came into my life when I was 11 years old,” Woods told Begay in the message.
He then turned to Begay’s charitable work through the NB3 Foundation.
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“To see what you’ve done off the golf course… And for your local Native American communities, you’ve helped over 80,000 youths and their families, which is absolutely incredible,” Woods said.
Begay, a former PGA Tour professional, is the first Native American winner of the award.
The reaction was about how he looked
The response under the clip, collected by GiveMeSport, focused less on the message than on the messenger. Several viewers wrote that Woods, who has stayed out of sight for months, looked drawn.
“Tiger looks a shell of his former self, sadly,” one wrote.
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“Tiger looks unrecognizable,” another posted.
A third comment ran: “Looking sober, but damn he’s aged.”
He has not competed since 2024
Woods has not played a competitive round since the 2024 Open Championship at Royal Troon in Scotland. In the intervening period he has had a torn Achilles repaired and undergone a seventh back procedure.
He has also stayed out of the public eye since March, when his Land Rover rolled over on Jupiter Island, Florida. Police found two hydrocodone pills in his pocket. A breathalyzer showed no alcohol in his system, but he refused a urine test.
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Woods spent around two months at a rehabilitation facility in Zurich, Switzerland, and returned to the United States in June.
Court date on September 8
Woods is due in court in Martin County, Florida, at 8:30am local time on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, for his first in-person hearing in the DUI case. Previous hearings had been handled by his lawyer.
He has pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanour counts, DUI with property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful test. His attorney, Douglas Duncan, has requested a jury trial.
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