Tiger Woods Loses to Back Pain

This is a story about how back pain ruined Tiger Woods' career and literally took away billions of dollars worth of value from his professional career as a top golfer and celebrity in the world.  Now, Tiger Woods' problems with lower back pain started well before his first surgery in 2014. But in March of 2014, Tiger Woods had a microdiscectomy performed. Now, microdiscectomy is a procedure that's been around for years. and we've stopped performing them at Duek Spine Institute because they are too invasive, they do destruction to the spine, and more importantly, there are far better treatments available, treatments that have been around since 2006, long before Tiger Woods had his microdiscectomy. You might be asking, why did Tiger Woods have a microdiscectomy if there were better treatments available? And the answer is simple. Just like Tiger Woods is one-of-a-kind, the better treatments are available at a one-of-a-kind spine center, the Deuk Spine Institute.

And unfortunately, Tiger Woods didn't know about the Deuk Spine Institute, much like somebody who doesn't follow golf wouldn't know who Tiger Woods is. Golfers who love the sport all know who Tiger Woods is. He's famous, right? But if you talk to somebody who's never watched a game of golf in their life, they probably don't know who Tiger Woods is. So you can't blame Tiger Woods for not knowing about Deuk Spine Institute's proprietary laser spinal surgery procedures that cure back pain with one treatment when it's coming from a disc injury. Instead, Tiger Woods had the microdiscectomy done in March of 2014. It wasn't long afterwards, because he kept complaining about back pain, that he ended up having a second microdiscectomy shortly thereafter. So he had two microdiscectomies. Now, this is an invasive procedure where muscle is being cut and destroyed, and that's why people need painkillers after the surgery, like narcotic painkillers. Tiger Woods had his experience with narcotic painkillers.

He ended up getting addicted to them. and he ended up having problems including a DUI that were related to the use of opioid narcotic painkillers after his back surgeries. You might ask yourself, well then why did Tiger Woods, this famous golfer who's got clearly enough money to afford to go to the best surgeon in the world, why did he end up with a microdiscectomy? And the answer is all too many doctors out there, even famous doctors like the ones that Tiger Woods went to, they don't know about the advances there are in spine surgery because their training was in traditional spinal surgeries. They also knew that if this didn't work, that if the microdiscectomy didn't fix Tiger Woods' problems, he could always come back and get pain management, shots, pills, radiofrequency ablations, and eventually he would end up getting a fusion, which is exactly what did happen.

He had his fusion in April of 2017. He had what's called an ALIF which stand for anterior lumbar interbody fusion.    So, if you look at the spine, the lower back has a series of bones and discs between the bones. An anterior lumbar interbody fusion is where the surgeon goes through the belly, moves all the intestines over, and basically cuts the disc out through the front, puts in a cage, and then a plate. The problem with that surgery is that it's been around a long time and its the oldest spinal fusion technique out there. It’s highly invasive, causes all kinds of complications, such as injury to blood vessels. Patients have even lost their lower legs. They had to be amputated because the leg did not have enough blood supply due to the vessels injured during surgery and basically all the tissues die and become gangrenous forcing the amputation.

ALIF can also injure the ureters, which drain urine down into the bladder. and there's also the possibility of injuring other structures in the belly, causing complications like a perforated bowel. So, ALIF is not a surgery that's recommended much anymore. There's a few surgeons who still do it, and maybe Tiger Woods chose a surgeon who did ALIF because that was sort of an older, more experienced surgeon. The problem with going with older and more experienced is often that they don't keep up to date with the newer technologies. Medicine is driven by technology, and the newer technologies often afford patients better options for care. For example, safer procedures, more effective procedures, or procedures that have a faster recovery. Now in Tiger Woods' case, he didn't need the microdiscectomies. He didn't need the fusion that he had done.

He could have had the Deuk Laser Disc Repair instead. The Deuk Laser Disc Repair is performed with a seven millimeter, quarter inch incision, This is a band-aid incision. There's no bleeding. There's no downtime. Tiger Woods could have been back to playing golf within two weeks after his surgery at Deuk Spine Institute had he had the Deuk Laser Disc Repair. The Deuk Laser Disc Repair is unique in that it cures back pain. from the disc, which is exactly what Tiger Woods had. Unfortunately, he chose a treatment, the microdiscectomy, which does not cure back pain. If you go to your spine surgeon and say, I have back pain, I have a herniated disc, will the microdiscectomy cure my back pain? The spine surgeon will certainly say, no, it will not cure your back pain. You're going to need to go to pain management afterwards and get pills and shots to deal with your back pain. There is no cure to back pain is what you will be told.

But if you go to Deuk Spine Institute, we'll tell you different. We'll tell you there are 30 causes to back pain and that we know every single one of those 30 causes. The disc injuries are the most common of the causes. and the best treatment for a disc injury, the one treatment that has the highest success rate, the lowest chance of a complication, and the fastest recovery. We could have put Tiger Woods back on the golf course within two weeks after competing after his surgery. That's the Deuk Laser Disc Repair. where we go in with an endoscope, we find a tear in the back of the disc where the pain is coming from, we use a laser to clean that tear to eliminate the source of back pain coming from the disc. Unfortunately, Tiger Woods didn't choose that procedure because he probably didn't know about it. And that's why we're producing this video. We don't want more victims of bad spine surgery like Tiger Woods.

Unfortunately, when people don't know they have choices, better choices, they end up going with the choice that they're presented with. And most surgeons do not know how to do the Deuk Laser Disc Repair, which is the most advanced, most successful, lowest chance of complications, and fastest return to normal life, including golf, in the world. This is the Deuk Laser Disc Repair we're talking about. Unfortunately, Tiger continued to be plagued with back pain. He ended up having another microdiscectomy performed next to the fusion because fusions cause a syndrome called adjacent segment disease and that's where you fuse one disc in the spine. For example, the L5-S1 joint is fused, and that puts additional pressure on the L4-5 joint that causes the joints above or even below the fusion to become painful and wear out very quickly. That's what happened in Tiger Woods' case, and again in December of 2020, he had a third microdiscectomy surgery.

So after that procedure a few years later, he ended up getting a disc replacement. on October 17, 2025, just last week, Tiger Woods had his sixth back surgery, when he should have had one back surgery. Every patient at Deuk Spine Institute comes in and has one back surgery for their problem. If you have a bad disc causing pain, we go in and do laser, and that's the last time you're going to need surgery on that disc. Now, some people end up with other problems causing back pain, like piriformis syndrome, where they have a tear in the piriformis muscle that causes horrible back pain, and the way we fix that is with the Duke Piriformis Release. that is very successful at eliminating back pain from a piriformis muscle tear. Very common in golfers, by the way. There's also sacroiliac joint pain, or sacroiliitis, as most of you might know it, where we can go in and basically destroy the pain nerves to the joint, permanently eliminating back pain.

Finally, there are facet joints. Facet joints are not well known by most people, but they're a small joint in the back of the spine. and there is no effective treatment at eliminating facet pain permanently except for the Duek Plasma Rhizotomy, another patented treatment available at Deuk Spine Institute.  

 Once again, Tiger Woods ended up with six back surgeries as of last Friday, and he continues to suffer with back pain. So let's take a moment to think about the toll that chronic back pain has taken on someone like Tiger Woods' life. And I'm going to tell you this: this is a very common scenario that we hear about over and over again in patients with chronic back pain. They start to treat their pain with conservative treatment like pain meds. They end up getting addicted to the pain meds. They end up needing more pain meds because the pain meds they were taking lose their effect over time. This is a phenomenon called tolerance.

It's well known and established when it comes to pain medication. We become tolerant to pain medicine just the same way we become tolerant to alcohol. If you drink alcohol every day, you find that it doesn't have the same effect. You need to increase the amount that you're drinking. You go from 1 ounce to 2 to 3 ounces to get the same effect. So, people develop tolerance to pain medication and Tiger Woods did. As a matter of fact, when he was involved in his DUI in 2017, he was on hydrocodone, hydromorphone, which are both narcotic painkillers. You should only be on one at a time. He was on two because the pain was so bad. He was also on Alprazolam. Now, what is Alprazolam? Most of you know it as Xanax. It's a benzodiazepine. It's a class of drugs that we call tranquilizers or sedatives. It's basically to calm your anxiety. So, it turns out people with back pain have anxiety problems. They have depression.

They have all kinds of mental health issues because they're suffering with back pain. They're not sleeping well. Their life is destroyed. His career was destroyed. He could not do golf. He couldn't be successful. He couldn't perform like he was supposed to. And you have all this pressure on you to perform from your sponsors, from your friends, from your family, from your spouse. So, Tiger was under tremendous emotional, personal pressure, anxiety, depression, and the medications he was taking, the Xanax, for example, it tends to cause depression. So do the narcotics. They cause depression as well. He was on an antidepressant at the same time, Zolpidem, and he was also on THC. Basically, we call this polypharmacy, where patients with a chronic medical condition are trying to find some way to alleviate the symptoms and how the effect of the symptoms are on their life.

They end up trying all kinds of different drugs, and the next thing you know, they end up either dead because they've overdosed, or they end up in an accident, like he did. So, unfortunately, Tiger Woods made some bad choices with respect to which treatments he chose to have done. He had treatments done by surgeons that are not effective at eliminating back pain. Had he come to the Deuk Spine Institute first, we would have cured his pain immediately, and he would be back to playing golf. Probably would not have been in a DUI.

He probably would still be the number one golfer in the world in my opinion He never would have lost all those years a product of you know money earning and being a great golfer which he disappeared basically for years because he was in so much pain and So, I really feel that it's important that you all know that there are better treatments available, but you will not hear about these treatments from most spine surgeons or pain management doctors because, A), they don't know about them, or B) they’re not making money off the treatments. So, they're going to recommend the treatments that they're going to make the most money off of, which are the ones that they can provide you, not the best treatments for you. To learn more about the Deuk Laser Disc Repair, please visit Deuk Spine Institute's website or our YouTube channel and hear from the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of patients we have cured over the years and eliminated their back or neck pain.