Tiger Back On The Shelf

Filed in archive Golf News on June 18, 2008

Courtesy: Getty Images

The golf world is abuzz today with the news that Tiger Woods is done for the season.

Woods announced today on his website that he was undergoing another surgery on his left knee - not for more arthroscopic work but to repair a tear in his anterior cruciate ligament which he ruptured, he says, last summer while running near his home in Florida.

During his recent post-surgery recovery, he managed to crack his left tibia in two places.

So, Woods played the U.S. Open on a torn ligament, broken leg and a sore knee. And still won. He was also playing a little coy with the media when asked about his various grimaces and wincing. We all assumed it was post-surgical pain. Turns out it was something entirely different. But just as painful.

"Yeah, the knee's sore", he would say. He certainly wasn't lying, was he?

Here's a point worth some speculation. Next month, the Tour begins drug testing. Tiger has been enduring a torn ligament, fractured tibia and the pain associated with arthroscopic knee surgery, variously since 2007.

Has he been doing it without pain killers? Or with something else that might speed healing? We and the Tour will never know since there has been no testing up to this point. And, of course, Tiger is now done for the season.

Robert Thompson at Going for the Green has a good take on what the loss of Woods is going to mean to the game of golf this season. Check it out; the impact will be very significant.

I'm also aghast at comments made by former U.S. Open winner, Retief Goosen who claimed that Tiger was exaggerating when he winced and limped during the Open. Goosen softened his view only when he was told that Woods is out for the rest of the season.

"I was being light-hearted" is now his modified point of view.