Some thoughts on Tiger Woods’ absence from the Masters next week
* Woods will surely return to tournament play, this is a troublesome but not uncommon injury among golfers. But we’ve been confronted by the reality that one day, professional golf will be played without Tiger Woods, permanently.
Some hysterical people seem to think this will be the end of the game’s interest to just about everybody.
Golf did pretty well for the 600 years-odd prior to Tiger. Sponsors paid their money to have their names associated with the game and spectators actually came to watch.
The figures ratcheted up a notch with him here, no question, but you can’t accurately measure by how much; the corporate world was moving into golf in a big way anyway in the mid-nineties.
It’s been great having him. But golf will manage pretty well again once he’s gone.
* Tiger, please don’t hurry back. There’s been some optimistic talk of him playing in the US Open or the Open at Hoylake, even the Players Championship in May.
Graham DeLaet, the fine young Canadian player, has almost the same surgical procedure in 2010 good news for Tiger, as DeLaet has been one of the form players in the world these last six months, suggesting full recovery can be expected.
However DeLaet had his surgery in January and said that he first felt he could go full-out with a driver in NOVEMBER. And he was ten years younger, with considerably less wear-and-tear, than Tiger is now.
We’ve seen a half-cocked Tiger in the latter part of last year and early part of this. One understands his impatience to get at his big targets, but taking the rest of the year off to get properly healed at last – makes sense.
He’s certainly not going to get to 18 majors aggravating injuries the way he’s been doing for much of the latter part of his career.
*As Tiger’s chase to 18 starts to fail, surely, there’s wonder in the growing realisation that Jack Nicklaus’ record of major championship victories is so great and remarkable that even the best player who has ever lived won’t get close.
*Is there any question, at all, that Tiger’s near obsession with the fitness and the gym has cost him a significant proportion of his career?
The torque of his first swing Tiger has, astoundingly, been World No 1 with three, some say four, different swings – is given as the reason for his knee and lower leg problems. However it was on the treadmill that he tore the ACL that cost him most of 2008, and it was running that caused the more recent Achilles problem.
Back injuries are common for golfers. I well recall Jack Nicklaus showing the press faxes (yes, it was that long ago) of morning stretching exercises he needed to play and sent to him by his physiotherapist at the 1996 Open, the last one he properly contended in.
The Big Three simply didn’t miss majors because of injury. Gary Player was a fitness fanatic and Jack and Arnold Palmer weren’t strangers to physical exercise. But the intensity of today’s gym work is a different thing altogether.
Tiger had clearly been doing some serious gym work this winter, because he’s been ripped even more than usual this spring. Did it help his back? Does gym work designed for other, more aerobic and intense sporting activity really help golfers?
*The Masters is still happening, folks! Get your money on Rory McIlroy right now.
The four majors Woods has missed due to injury have all been won by IrishmenPadraig Harrington twice in 2008, Rory and Darren Clarke in 2011.