First, the positive news, followed by the eye-popping background.
Take a deep breath, sports world, the doomsday prophecies are apparently premature, if not altogether wrong.
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| Tiger Woods was told by doctors to skip the U.S. Open; instead, he won. (AP) |
"He's going to better than ever," said swing coach Hank Haney of his star pupil. "Think about it. His knee hasn't been right for a long, long time and he's won, what, 10 of his last 13 tournaments, with two seconds and a fifth?
"After they finally get this fixed, how can anybody think he won't play better than he ever has?"
That deafening, bicoastal whooshing sound heard from Oregon to Florida is the sound of millions associated with the golf industry and professional tours exhaling in unbridled relief, anticipation and glee.
The "he" in question, of course, is Tiger Woods, who won the U.S. Open on Monday with barely a leg to stand on. Arguably, it's "he" with a capital H, because for the professional tours and related industries, he has been the savior in swooshes.
At tall bridges from Orlando to Beaverton to Ponte Vedra Beach, authorities can stand down from the suicide watch. Nobody from the Golf Channel, Nike or PGA Tour need bother taking the fast trip to a long dirt nap just yet.
Sure, golf must sputter onward with its understudies while Woods recuperates over the rest of 2008, but given the worst-case scenarios being bandied about over the past couple of days, the hangover's not so bad compared to Wednesday, when word first surfaced that the world No. 1 will be sitting after undergoing reconstructive knee surgery.
As the images of his five-day hike around the cliffside Torrey Pines remain etched in our minds, the details are less easy to grasp. While partaking in the toughest event on the planet, Woods won while playing with two fractures in his left fibia, not to mention a shredded anterior cruciate ligament, with virtually zero preparation. He should have just played left-handed to make it even more mind-boggling.
But initially, it was feared Woods' self-proclaimed greatest professional achievement might have marked the beginning of the end for his career. With Woods providing few details and only coy hints, speculation ran wild as Woods, conversely, walked gingerly.
Understand that golf isn't just a sport televised on TV, it's an outright industry that employs millions and generates billions in nearly every hamlet and burgh in the country. Growth has been stagnant in the States for decades, and having a permanently hobbled show pony would only have driven more related industries to the brink of ruin. It's not even a slight cultural stretch -- Woods is to golf what Hendrix was to the electric guitar. It existed before Jimi, but all the rules were changed thereafter.
Hours after Woods' management confirmed he will have surgery to clean up the spaghetti that is his left knee, details began to surface about just how audacious the days leading up to the 108th U.S. Open really were for Woods, his doctors and family.
