An injury layoff has given Bernhard Langer time to plan his DP World Tour and Augusta farewell

Bernhard Langer has had to delay his Masters farewell until 2025 because of injury.

Sidelined by a pickleball injury, Bernhard Langer has two farewell parties to plan after confirming that the 2025 Masters will be his last.

Bernhard Langer should have been teeing it up at Augusta National for the final time this week. The two-time Masters champion had it all mapped out. What he was going to say at the Champions Dinner, who he was going to thank, and how he was going to savior his 41^st and final appearance. Then his Achilles tendon popped during a game of pickleball in early February.

He underwent surgery a few days later, sidelining him for three months, and putting his farewell party on hold for another year.

“The goal now is to come back next year and say goodbye and farewell as a player and have a lot of my family and friends to attend,” explains the Hall of Famer.

“It will be a very emotional, goodbye for me. I think I’ve never done anything like this in my life before, but Augusta and the Masters means a great deal to me and to my career. It’s going to be tough to realize that this will be my last round on this golf course as a competitive player.”

It’s a mark of his incredible longevity that Langer has made the weekend 27 times at Augusta, most recently in 2020 when he finished on three-under-par. The German has only ever shot over 80 twice across 134 rounds, though he accepts that Father Time has slowly caught up with him.

“I just realized that the course is getting too long. It’s 7,550 yards from where we tee off and the fairways are mowed against us, which means the grain is into us and the ball doesn’t run quite as much. It’s just very, very long, and I’m getting shorter.

“The young guys are all getting longer, it seems. They hit 9 irons into Par 4s or whatever it may be, I hit 2 irons. When you do that over 72 holes. They reach the Par 5s, I can’t. It’s just not that much fun anymore. To me, I have to be competitive to have fun. I realized my time was there.

“My time is ending and finishing, and it’s time to go. I don’t just want to be somebody that shows up and shoots two times 78 and misses the cut by five or 10. That’s not me. I want to be competitive, and I want to be on the leaderboard if possible.”

Langer will be 67 in August and while he has already signposted the BMW International Open in Munich as his farewell tournament on the DP World Tour, 50 years after his first, he has no interest in putting away his clubs for good.

He still harbors hopes of adding to his tally of 46 wins on the PGA Champions Tour and enhancing his legacy as the most successful senior player of all time. He is even targeting an early comeback at next month’s Insperity Invitational ahead of defending the US Senior Open at Newport Country Club in late June.

“My recovery is going very well,” says Langer, a 12-time senior major champion. “Three days after surgery, I started rehab, working on my calf muscle and other muscles.

“Now I’m two months after and I’m standing and walking. Actually, I’ve been playing, and practicing golf for the last ten days. My expectation is to be back to full golf activities on tour in hopefully four to eight weeks.”

Langer was speaking courtesy of Mercedes-Benz.

About the author

Michael Catling
Features Editor

Michael Catling is Today’s Golfer‘s Features Editor and an award-winning journalist who specializes in golf’s Majors and Tours, including DP World, PGA, LPGA, and LIV.

Michael joined Today’s Golfer in 2016 and has traveled the world to attend the game’s biggest events and secure exclusive interviews with dozens of Major champions, including Jack Nicklaus, Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Gary Player, and Justin Thomas.

Get in touch with Michael via email and follow him on Twitter.