This hidden advantage of the PGA Tour’s new system offers options for injured players

A popular test for PGA Tour players at the end of August — and at the end of their 2024 season — is that they were tired. Scottie Scheffler is out of power. Xander Schauffele was talking about his “patience bucket” running on empty. It’s a long season if you’re a top player.

But more than just fatigue, at least a few star players are injured, too. Both Jordan Spieth and Ludwig Aberg have opted for surgery in the past few weeks to correct issues that have plagued their games. Coincidence, or tendency? It’s hard to say. But with the newly discovered and well-defined youth offseasonwhere there’s no pressure to compete with the top 100 FedEx Cup players, top pros can now stop dealing with nagging injuries until the end of the season. Like a quarterback or a point guard can only do after their team will be out of the finals.

Spieth has been outspoken about his lingering wrist injury throughout 2024 (and years past). As he explained, his wrist sprained several times, resulting in nerve damage to his wrist and arm. Not good for a guy who moves those wrists and arms hundreds of times a day.

“Anything that affected the world was not a good situation for me this year,” Spieth said during the Wyndham Championship, promising that he needed immediate surgery.. The issue arose at RBC Heritage in April, and continued. But it wasn’t so serious that he couldn’t scrape it off and cut it again. Spieth was 42nd in the FedEx Cup at the time, but failed to finish in the top 20 all season, finishing 67th but still making the playoffs. All was not lost.

Aberg’s situation was a little different. He withdrew from the Wells Fargo Championship in May, citing a “knee problem” and opted to rest before the PGA Championship. He missed the cut at the PGA, while wearing a knee brace, and took two weeks off for extra rest. The rest of his summer looked very much like Aberg’s, apart from the cut at the Open Championship, but he insisted that his knee problems were over. All good.

Except, apparently everything was like that not nice! Whenever he studied putts, Aberg avoided bending his left knee too much. Surprisingly, when Aberg’s season ended, Todd Lewis reported on the Golf Channel that Aberg would undergo surgery this week, to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee. Like Spieth, it was a problem, but not a serious one to close the season. So Aberg went ahead, played well and made $795,000 in the FedEx Cup and another $3.4 million in the Comcast Business Top 10. Then he did what other professional athletes do: plan for the maintenance process as those piles of money are secured.

Maybe habit is not the right word to describe the actions of only two players, but Spieth and Aberg undoubtedly took a joint approach. Grind this year and face it in September. In years past, the Tour schedule – and the season’s points race – will resume this week, just days after the Tour Championship ends. It’s like telling a 400 meter Bronze medalist, “Congratulations on that medal! But remember, we have a decathlon coming up. You may skip one or two events, but everyone will have a head start on you.”

Where would you fit the meniscus surgery and the 6 week recovery period into that schedule? Players are forced to give up points in the fall season and start a deficit, or play through pain without dealing with it, or – possibly worse – shut down in the middle of the season and explore the path of medical exemption.

In Aberg’s case, he doesn’t have to run back to the competition. He is expected to take September off and may be able to get in a fall or two in October. But maybe recovery takes a while. Maybe you want to take an extended, unplanned trip back to Sweden. Maybe we don’t see Aberg until Hawaii. In a world where the best players are winded and maybe even injured at the end of August, we need to be comfortable with them taking a break until January.

In Spieth’s case, there is plenty of time. In a more serious recovery, he can work his way back late In January – ineligible for The Sentry in Kapalua – without missing much. Using his regular schedule as a template, Spieth may not play until the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, more than four months from now. That might sound like forever on the golf calendar we’re used to, but it might also be why Spieth says he needs surgery “immediately.” Four months may be exactly the time he needs to recover.