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Tiger out for the rest of the year
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Tiger Woods announced he will not play any competitive golf for the remainder of the 2008 season. The injury that was so obvious to all of us watching the U.S. Open this past weekend is much worse than was originally let on by Tiger's camp.
He has a torn anterior cruciate ligament (better known as the ACL) and two stress fractures in the left tibia. The torn ACL occurred last July while he was jogging near his home in Orlando. Major reconstructive surgery was an option but Tiger hoped to avoid such an ordeal and see if he could live with the injury. After The Masters, however, he had arthroscopic surgery and it was while recovering from this procedure that the two fractures occurred. At this point, the reconstructive surgery is the only option and it will be done later this summer.
There are two big questions this situation creates. The first is whether Tiger will recover from this surgery and be the same dominant player that he has been since turning pro. My guess is that he will. The knee is an essential part of the golf swing. Well, Tiger's golf swing, anyway. Whatever part the knee is supposed to play in the swing is clearly missing in mine. However, if running backs can come back and sustain tackles and the cuts they have to make, I'm betting Tiger will be back as good as ever, his astonishing torque notwithstanding.
The second question is how the PGA Tour will do in his absence. There is no doubt television ratings will be down. The "Tiger factor" is huge. There are only so many people who actually like to watch golf. But there are a huge amount of people who tune in to watch Tiger make history weekend after weekend. However, this may be good in the long run. I imagine it can be pretty deflating for a professional golfer to know that if Tiger plays his best, everybody else is shooting for second. Without him in the field, many more golfers can legitimately feel they have a shot at winning. Perhaps we will see the emergence of a few golfers who will take advantage of Tiger's absence and gain some confidence. I hope so.
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