Posted on 05/12/2011 10:48:23 AM PDT by crosshairs
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The problems continue for Tiger Woods, only this time it's his livelihood, not his image, in the balance.
Woods withdrew after shooting 42 on the front nine at the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass on Thursday, citing pain in his left leg that has plagued him intermittently throughout his career.
"The knee acted up and then the Achilles followed after that, and then the calf started cramping up," said Woods, who triple-bogeyed the par-4 fourth hole and made three bogeys and no birdies. "Everything started getting tight, so it's just a whole chain reaction."
The injury for Woods raises red flags because his knee has been operated on four times, and he reinjured it while hitting a shot from under a tree at the Masters last month. The exact diagnosis was a grade-one mild medial collateral ligament sprain to his left knee and a mild strain to his left Achilles? tendon, both suffered while hitting a shot from pine straw on the 17th hole of his third round at Augusta. In an effort to let it heal, he did not enter the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow last week, an event he normally plays. He sounded optimistic about the injury earlier this week at Sawgrass.
"Oh, yeah, the knee is better, no doubt," Woods said Tuesday. "The Achilles is better, as well. So I'm here playing."
More on Tiger: Special Section | Life in Pictures | SI Covers
Thursday, though, was a struggle from the outset. Woods said he began feeling pain in his leg from "the first tee shot," and more pain when his foot slipped on pine straw on the second hole. Now there seems to be nothing "mild" about his situation, and after withdrawing he admitted he's concerned. His 42 was his highest nine-hole score at the Players by three shots, but not his highest on Tour. He's shot 43 four times, most recently on the back nine at last year's Wells Fargo Championship.
Woods withdrew from the 2010 Players, too, with an inflamed neck joint.
As his playing partners Martin Kaymer and Matt Kuchar stepped onto the 10th tee at 10:30 Thursday morning, Woods stepped to the podium to offer a few quotes before ducking into the locker room. He was directed into the Tour's medical trailer, where he stayed for about 60 seconds, before emerging and gingerly climbing into a white Mercedes in the players' parking lot, presumably for a two-hour ride home that would offer plenty of time for reflection.
"Felt fine during warm-up," Woods said, "and then as I played it progressively got worse."
Woods, 35, has not won a tournament in 18 months, and has slipped to eighth in the World Ranking. It had been widely assumed that he would rebound from his tumultuous 2010, since his troubles then were personal and not career-threatening, but now it's anyone's guess when or whether Woods will win again.
Put it next to a “Glitter Gulch” bill board in Vegas.
Gee, glad it wasn’t the hip or I might start thinking avascular necrosis - of course, that’s mainly a result of overuse of anabolic steriods...
Nah...
Which leg? His middle leg?
An old friend once told me: “A golf course is a waste of a perfectly good rifle range”
Graeme McDowell tweeted that he saw Woods limping in the locker room. “Considering he’s supposed to be on the course I’m guessing that’s not a good sign,” McDowell wrote.
To you and me that's true, but to Tiger the best things he had were a porn star and the waitress from the Waffle House. And he has enough money for those even if he never wins again.
And on a related note, I was hoping his "therapist" was going to be named Bobbit.
God has no use for adulterers......
dang. That’s a shotgun-shell driver - the title didn’t come over
The thing is, nobody likes the guy. I remember the weeks after the story of Tiger’s harem of ho’s broke.
The press couldn’t find anyone to say anything remotely postive about the man.
The only ones who did, including Daly, really didn’t even say anything positive about him. What their take was, “Tiger is good for the sport”, not because of who he is, but because when he’s on tour, the financial gains are better for everyone else.”
That’s it.
Golf is a game of hitting a ball into a cup. Not much else to it.
or motocross track
got the course near me at sawgrass going on and all these idiots from afar have been driving like blind idiots.
Can’t wait for this golf to be over here and get the roads back to normal and have the idiots go and cause crashes where they live.
they are right
Kind of like Barry Bonds - when the steroid scandal broke and everybody stopped using them he promptly spent almost an entire season on the disabled list. The steroids allow athletes to play through the pain rather than actually improving on their physical abilities. Just like Bonds in his last years, Tiger can probably hit as long and accurately as ever, but he'll break down physically much more easily - so he'll never again be the machine he once was.
He's just not like the Tiger of old.
Cheers!
Not only melt when he showed up, but make a beeline for the nearest dark corner so they could curl up in a fetal position, piss themselves, and commence to sucking their thumbs. An entire generation of losers is what allowed Eldrick to amass his phony majors total, and the poster boy of this group is Davis Love III.
he should try PED's..........again.
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