Additional Comments on Tiger's Injuries

I thought you might like a little more detail so I just picked this up at ESPN. This is sort of a copy and paste. But Hank Haney was with Tiger when his doctors told him he should not play so here is Hank's take on it.

Hank Haney, Woods' swing coach, said Wednesday that the world's No. 1-ranked golfer defied his doctor's advice and even predicted he'd win the Open.

"The week of Memorial [two weeks before the Open], I thought there was no chance he could play," Haney said in a telephone interview from his home in Texas. "The doctors told him he needed to be on crutches for three weeks and then three more weeks of inactivity, and then you start rehabbing.

"But Tiger looked the guy in the eye and said, 'I'm playing in the U.S. Open and I'm going to win.' "

"And then he started putting on his shoes," Haney recalled. "He looked at me and said, 'Come on, Hank. We'll just putt today.' Every night, I kept thinking there was no chance he's going to play. He had to stop in his tracks for 30 seconds walking from the dining room table to the refrigerator.

"He was not going to miss the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. There just wasn't any discussion."

Haney said the extent of Woods' preparation for the U.S. Open was hitting four or five practice balls at a time before heading back to a golf cart.

"He couldn't walk," Haney said. "The 50 balls I'm talking about him hitting included the first 15 warm-up wedges. You're talking about 30 full swings a day."

"Tiger has such an incredible pain tolerance," Haney said. "When he said he was going to play, I knew he was going to play. The thing that concerned me most was, was he going to be able to walk? Was it just going to deteriorate so much that he wasn't going to be able to swing at all?

"And that didn't take into account the issue that he hadn't had any preparation. He didn't get to play. He didn't get to do anything. That was the concern. But Tiger has such an incredible pain tolerance.

"In my mind, I honestly thought he was just going to give it his best effort, his 100 percent best effort all the way up until the tournament. I knew he wasn't going to bag it two weeks before. He was going to hope for a miracle until the last possible point that he couldn't make it. In my mind, that was the most likely scenario: He just would try until the end and then come to the realization that he couldn't go. When he canceled out of the Memorial, he was in real bad shape then. He couldn't have played in the U.S. Open then. He couldn't even move."

Haney believes Woods had no choice but to go through with surgery now. And that, in the long run, he'll be better off.

"Why wouldn't he? I expect him to be much better than ever," Haney said. "He's going to have a strong leg and a structurally sound knee. He hasn't had that in years. There is no reason that he won't be better than he's ever been. He's going to have all this time to think about the improvements that he's going to make in his golf swing and everything else.

"It's just incredible he accomplished what he did. I'm so proud of him. I can't believe it. The guy's heart and his toughness ... wow. It really is just wow. I don't know what more you can say than that."

Well, there you have it.

Tiger Wins 2008 US Open Ending His 2008 Season

By now everyone knows the outcome of probably the most amazing US Open in the history of the game. The world watched as a wounded Tiger played through the pain for 91 holes and willed his way to his 14th Major.

We knew about the knee ... it was so obvious. But we didn't know he was playing with a double stress fracture of the left tibia. Tiger said nothing about it. It happened just before the Memorial. But he was determined to play in the Open and win.

The doctors tell Tiger that the stress fractures will heal with time. How much time will be required is unknown. Tiger says the fractures were the source of his greatest pain during the game.

He is finished for the year, but not without that one last major victory that capped off a painful 10 months.

What we didn't know was that he has had a torn ligament in the knee since last July. So surgery was not optional. But he delayed it. He wanted to go for his 14th and maybe get in some more majors before going under the knife.

He says he tore the ACL while jogging at home after the British Open last July. He chose not to have surgery at that time and continued on to win seven consecutive victories, including the Dubai Desert Classic in Europe and his Target World Challenge, an unofficial event.

He had arthroscopic surgery April 15 to clean out cartilage in his left knee, bypassing ACL surgery with hopes it could get him through the 2008 season. But going 91 holes for his 14th career major made it impossible to play any longer.

Here's a quote: "Although I will miss the rest of the 2008 season, I'm thrilled with the fact that last week was such a special tournament."

Well, to sum it up, he misses a major for the first time this year and will not be in the Ryder Cup.

He has played seven times worldwide this year and won five of them. In retrospect, his performance at Torrey Pines was even more than spectacular. It was more like miraculous.

This was the Tiger's disclosure statement:

"I know much was made of my knee throughout the last week and it was important to me that I disclose my condition publicly at an appropriate time. I wanted to be very respectful of the USGA and their incredibly hard work and make sure the focus was on the US Open.

"Now it is clear that the right thing to do is to listen to my doctors, follow through with this surgery and focus my attention on rehabilitating my knee."

Prayers for complete recovery, Tiger.

by
Marion

US Open Goes to Playoff - 3rd Round Video Here

Tiger made a 12-foot birdie putt on the final hole to force an 18-hole playoff with Rocco Mediate scheduled for Monday. In the meantime, you can watch a 3rd-round video of all of Tiger's shots on Saturday. Take a look ...





Marion