Tiger Woods: reality check for golf world as car crash diagnosis confirms slim chances of comeback
- Stanford Medical Center chief says ‘very, very unlikely’ Woods will play pro golf again after suffering major leg trauma
- McIlroy recalls Woods’ ‘greatest comeback in sports’ in 2017 but says ‘golf is so far from the equation right now’
The PGA Tour without Tiger Woods was always inevitable purely because of age. His shattered right leg from his SUV flipping down a hill on a sweeping road through coastal Los Angeles suburbs only brings that closer.
“Listen, when Tiger wants to talk about golf, we’ll talk about golf,” commissioner Jay Monahan said at the World Golf Championship in Florida. “When you’re going to overcome what he needs to overcome, I think the love of all of our players and everybody out here, it’s going to come forward in a big way and across the entire sporting world. I think he’ll feel that energy and I think that’s what we should all focus on.”
Woods made it clear what he faces with an update posted early on Wednesday to social media by his team that outlined the “long surgical procedure” at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Four previous surgeries to repair ligaments were done on the left knee. This is the first major trauma to the right leg. Woods has had five surgeries on his lower back in the last seven years. The most recent was in December, a microdiscectomy to remove a pressurised disc that was pinching a nerve.
“I would say, unfortunately, it’s very, very unlikely that he returns to be a professional golfer after these injuries,” said Dr Michael Gardner, chief of orthopaedic trauma at Stanford Medical Center. “His age, his multiple back issues, this is going to be a very long road ahead if he chooses to attempt to return to his previous level of golfing.”
Woods had only one top-10 finish last year and that was before the pandemic. Even after golf returned, he waited an additional month to get started. He played only seven times since July and never cracked the top 35. He remains one victory short of his 83rd victory, which would set a PGA Tour record, the one most reasonable for him to break. That was before the crash.
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Golf legend Tiger Woods suffers severe leg injuries after rollover car crash in California
Four-time major champion Rory McIlroy has already seen one comeback. He often talks about having lunch one day with Woods in Florida, right after Woods’ fourth back surgery to fuse his lower spine. He saw the pain. And two years later, he saw Woods win the Masters for a fifth time, his 15th major.
“I don’t want to take anything away from what Ben Hogan did after his car crash or any of the other comebacks that athletes have had in other sports, but right now I can’t think of any greater comeback in sports than the journey that he made from that lunch we had in 2017 to winning the Masters a couple years later,” McIlroy said.
Hogan threw himself in front of his wife right before they were struck by a Greyhound bus in 1949. He broke his pelvis, collarbone and left ankle, chipped a rib and had blood clots that left him with circulation problems the rest of his life. Hogan was 36 at the time.
What the future holds for Woods and for the tour is not anything players were ready to embrace.
“At this stage, I think everyone should just be grateful that he’s here, that he’s alive, that his kids haven’t lost their dad,” McIlroy said. “That’s the most important thing. Golf is so far from the equation right now, it’s not even on the map.”
