Tiger Woods just suffered another devastating injury. Is he done?

Tiger Woods was training at home, working his way back from yet another injury, when he was struck by one more devastating blow on the back-nine of his career: a ruptured Achilles tendon.

Woods, who was attempting to return from his latest back surgery, says he felt a sharp pain in his left Achilles and underwent a “minimally-invasive” repair for an injury that will require arduous rehabilitation—with no guarantee that it will ever fully heal.

The circumstances raise a bleak question for the 49-year-old golfing legend who was already a diminished force on the course:

Is this it for Tiger Woods?

“I am back home now and plan to focus on my recovery and rehab,” the 15-time major champion wrote on social media. “Thank you for all the support.”

The latter half of Woods’s career has been plagued by injuries that have forced him to play through pain during the scant opportunities when he has actually been able to compete in recent years.

He last played competitively at the 2024 British Open in July, when he missed the cut. A couple months later, he underwent the back surgery—one of more than a half dozen procedures he’s had on that part of his body alone. Since then, Woods has competed in a team event with his son and in the virtual golf league TGL, but not on the PGA Tour.

The worst of his injuries followed a 2021 car crash that sent him into emergency surgery. Ever since, he has described the hourslong process it takes to get his body through a single round and how merely walking 18 holes has become a grueling challenge. At times, Woods has appeared to use one of his clubs as a makeshift cane as he tries to navigate his way around a course.

And all of that was before he tore his Achilles.

For elite athletes, returning from a rupture can take up to a year—and it might take an additional 12 months to get back to full strength. But while there’s extensive literature on recovery timelines for NFL and NBA players, that’s less true of professional golfers.

Doctors say a golfer should be able to return quicker than a quarterback or a shooting guard because the game is more stationary and doesn’t require running or jumping, explosive actions that put stress on the Achilles. Still, for someone who struggled traversing the hills of Augusta National pre-injury, the idea of walking 72 holes after a procedure that requires weeks of rest sounds like a tall order.

It’s also true that Woods wasn’t exactly in prime form even before these latest injuries. In five events last season, he missed the cut three times and withdrew once. The only time he made the cut came at the Masters, where his play cratered over the weekend, resulting in a 16-over finish. At this point, it’s nearly six years since Woods defied expectations and overcame a previous spate of injuries, surgeries and off-the-course issues to take the Masters in 2019. He hasn’t won on Tour since later that year.

For the biggest Tiger fans, though, things aren’t completely hopeless. In fact, there’s recent proof that an aging golfer can return to form in astonishingly quick fashion after this sort of injury.

Last year, Bernhard Langer, a two-time Masters champion in the 1980s, tore his Achilles and was back in just three months. By the end of the season, Langer had won the playoff finale on the senior tour.

Granted, as a pro golfer in his 60s playing on the PGA Tour Champions, there was one key difference where Langer is concerned. Because of his injury, he was able to earn an exception to ride in a golf cart while he recovered. Even he acknowledged that playing would have been impossible otherwise.

“Funny thing is I can play golf but I can’t walk,” Langer said last year at a tournament. “Makes no sense.”

That might be an option for Woods pretty soon, too. He turns 50—and becomes eligible for the senior circuit—in December.

Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com.