Tiger’s Torrey Triumph Put Him on the Sidelines and Left Golf Gasping in Wonder. How Will We Respond to the Silent Treatment?

by Vic Williams

Somewhere during his now-famous, doctor-mocking run-up to the U.S. Open, someone must have told Tiger Woods to “break a leg,” as if this were a play and he was the lead. He took them seriously, but he wasn’t acting.

By now we all know the story, relayed across countless media channels almost ad nauseum: Tiger pulled into Torrey Pines down a knee but up for the challenge of winning perhaps his most coveted title to date, fried ACL and double-stress fracture and virtually no on-course practice time since The Masters be damned. And when it was all over, after he had staged comeback after comeback and drained more dramatic putts in three days than most of us will encounter in a hacker’s lifetime, after he’d vanquished a game and smiling 45-year-old dude named Rocco in the most exciting Monday playoff in memory, he admitted what we, as journalists on the scene for the duration, knew all along: That he was playing in serious pain, that every swing was against doctor’s orders and that considered as a whole over 91 holes, they posed a threat to his career — indeed, to his continuing and unquestioned status as the Greatest Golfer Ever.

Eight days after his latest and perhaps greatest triumph, in Park City, Utah, Tiger underwent reconstructive surgery on his left knee. The joint — which he subjects to incredible amounts of torque every time he swings — had been cleaned out arthroscopically several times, leaving the man in pain much of the past decade and no doubt hoping the knife would never need to dig deeper. Those hopes evaporated as Tiger went for a morning run during last year’s Open Championship at Carnoustie. He felt the ACL go, but did his best to blow it off. He soldiered on, knocking off another PGA Championship, lapping the field for the first-ever FedEx Cup title and, in 2008, winning four of the six events he entered, including his Torrey gut-check. But in the end he couldn’t dodge another kind of main event, a procedure that involved transplanting a section of tendon from Tiger’s right hamstring and using it in place of the snapped anterior cruciate ligament in the left knee (see Page 38). Football players know this surgery inside and out. Maybe an NBA star here and there. Tennis players. Golfers, not so much.

This is uncharted territory for a player of Tiger’s stature. Over the July 4 weekend, he was supposed to be in Washington, D.C., hosting the AT&T Classic. Instead, unable to fly due the swelling the pressure change would inflict on his aching knee, he was left at home in Florida, “hobbling around like an old man,” as he told Nick Faldo. And he had no idea when he’d get the all-clear to hit balls, much less return to his throne on Tour.

So we’re left with questions. Lots of them. Tiger being the SoCal cat he is and always will be, and FG being at the U.S. Open for seven amazing days to witness history, we figured we’re in as good a position as anyone to start answering them … with a little help from our friends.

Was it the Best Open Ever?

Definitely, in terms of West Coast Opens. And no, we’re not shortchanging Pebble Beach’s four-act (so far) drama, in which Tiger was the field-lapping star of Act IV — we remember Jack’s 1-iron and Tom’s wedge from the rough and the other Tom’s gritty comeback in a gale. Olympic Club has had its share of fun, too, but let’s face it: Scott Simpson and Lee Janzen aren’t exactly in Tiger’s league in the charisma department. And we weren’t alive for Hogan’s victory at Riviera in 1948, so it doesn’t count.

No disrespect meant on all those fronts, even though no less a self-appointed authority than Johnny Miller told FG that Tiger’s first Open triumph in 2000 was “the greatest performance in the history of golf. He won by 15, shot the lowest total that’s ever been shot. He was at the top of his game. We covered him for 72 holes and he never lipped out one putt. Which is impossible, by the way. Every putt went in.”

Miller was on a roll. “So that’s the standard. Everybody remembers that crazy shot at No. 6; he had 235 to the green, in the rough, had to hit it over a tall pine tree and a cliff, blind, and took out a 6-iron and knocked it on. Roger Maltbie said, ‘That’s it, I quit.’ Nobody could do that.” But Tiger did, and kept doing it, kept finding new ways to dominate through swing changes, a marriage, the loss of Pops, the birth of Sam. He added his second Open trophy in 2002 at Bethpage Black in New York, where the Open returns next year, and that was impressive, too. He stacked up the hardware at the other three majors between then and now, and along the way forced his contemporaries to get better, work harder — even spurring his No. 1 American foe, Phil Mickelson, to finally realize his own Major potential. That’s all earthshaking stuff, at least in the relatively insular world of professional golf.

But looking back over the weeks since the 91 Holes That Changed Golf, while still feeling the sting and void left by Tiger’s absence and considering what transpired to make that void unavoidable, we keep coming back to the same blaring conclusion: A limping Tiger and vindicated Torrey Pines set the bar higher, and Tiger knew it the moment he shook Mediate’s hand and hugged Steve Williams on the No. 7 green — just him and the hazy Pacific in the background, and an uncertain future ahead. “I said it out there today, I think this is probably the best ever,” he told the media. “All things considered, I don’t know how I ended up in this position, to be honest with you. The week was long. There were a lot of questions. And here we are 91 holes later.”

Even Miller acknowledges that incredible June week’s epochal standing in the arc of golf history. “This one, emotionally, with the pain, and him being a Southern Cal boy … this was his only chance probably to win a U.S. Open in Southern Cal. His family and a lot of close friends were there. Combined with Rocco putting him up against the wall, with the pain he had to go through, it was his greatest performance in his mind, the most important championship he’s ever won.”

Tiger certainly didn’t disagree as he all but hugged the Open trophy at the post-playoff press conference, smiling broadly through the obvious pain, high on adrenaline and a potent brand of confidence few other golfers, or athletes of any stripe, can hope to match. “It’s either this one or my first one — my first major [the 1997 Masters], that is. This week had a lot of doubt to it, to be honest with you. I hadn’t walked 18 holes since Augusta. You just need to keep playing. Whatever it is, you just need to keep going forward.”

He paused. “My buddies and I, we always used to say when we were working out, we’d go, ‘How many more reps you got?’ We’d go, ‘four.’ As in ‘forever.’ That’s the idea. There’s no end line. You just keep pushing and pushing. I did that all week.” He certainly did, starting in earnest with the 30 he threw at the field on his back nine on Friday, while playing partners Mickelson and Adam Scott shrunk into the background like a couple of no-names. On Saturday he turned up the juice with that ridiculous eagle at 13, the pitch-in from bunkerside rough on 17 and another slippery 3 at 18. Suddenly and predictably, he took the lead.

Through it all, Tiger winced on every tee shot, then moved on. By the back nine Sunday his gait brought to mind that of Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects, only he wasn’t faking it. Rising above it, yes. Faking it, never. Then, finally, came The Putt on 18, the last gasp of regulation time, while an effusive and resigned Rocco watched his slim one-stroke lead evaporate on TV, standing on the edge of Torrey’s cart barn, which had been converted into an interview area.

We listened from that area, too. The fans lining Torrey’s 18th green were 15-deep and we had no shot at seeing Tiger in his moment from that vantage point. So we saw the putt drop on seven-second delay, first hearing the roar, then hearing the rumble. It was eerie and amazing and the perfect semi-ending. Then came a smiling Tiger through the throng to sign his card, high-fiving the faithful, with Rocco waiting at the other end. “What are you, crazy?” asked the happy-go-lucky Pennsylvanian as he hugged The Man. “Guess we have a game tomorrow,” came Tiger’s reply. Indeed they did.“I knew he’d make that putt,” Mediate said Sunday evening. “I wanted to win today, and I thought I had a pretty good shot at it. And I made him do something today and he did it, which is amazing. He does it all the time.”

Pushed by a huge crowd that skipped work to follow Monday’s 18-hole playoff shot for shot — you could almost feel the USGA grinning — Rocco staged a comeback of his own. Three shots down on the No. 11 tee, he wouldn’t accept that he was toast. He strung three birdies together and took a one-shot lead to No. 15, then held it there with a huge 35-foot putt after Tiger had stuffed a miracle shot from the adjacent hole’s fairway bunker. Suddenly, one of the biggest upsets in golf history was looming large. But, as we know, Tiger came back, this time for keeps, and Rocco could only bow down with the rest of us.

“I don’t know what else you can say,” an exhausted but amped Mediate said later. “I’ve come back from a lot of injuries, too. To try to come back and play — obviously not at that level, but I understand what he went through. I’m not surprised. Nothing he does surprises me. You can’t get him. I thought I had him for a while. I kept hitting good shot after good shot after good shot, and so did he. But early, he made some unbelievable par putts and birdie putts. He is who he is.”

In the end, the final result seemed fated for a guy who, like Babe Ruth, called his shot for this most desired of all Opens. And there was his old friend Torrey Pines, waiting to join him in greatness. It’s been that way for nearly a quarter century, and Tiger’s love for the place was lost on no one, himself included.

“I used to come down here as a junior golfer to play. The first regulation 18 holes I played in San Diego was here,” he told the press. “I was about 10. The golf course was a lot longer to me then. When I first came down here I played Presidio Hills, competed in the Junior Worlds there, for 10-and-unders. My dad treated me, said, ‘OK, you’re 10 now, a big boy now, you’re ready to play a real golf course. Where do you want to play?’ I said, ‘Torrey Pines South.’ Every hole was like driver, 3-wood, 3-wood, you know. About like it was this week, actually.”

He laughed, and everyone laughed with him. Then, as is Tiger’s way, he got serious again. “But it’s always felt comfortable. Even after the redesign in ’01, I’ve always felt comfortable with all the lines here, and it’s just happened to work out. I’ve won here as a junior golfer, as a professional, and now the ultimate — the U.S. Open.”

How Did Torrey Stack Up?

From the week’s earliest practice rounds, the players raved about Torrey Pines South with one simple term: “It’s fair.” Some guys, like Mickelson, thought the new mega-long tee on 13 was ridiculous, turning an exciting risk-reward hole into a ho-hum lay-up three-shotter. Ironically, the hole bit Phil back on Saturday. He flop-wedged and three-jacked his way to a quadruple-bogey 9 and wasn’t heard from again (though, for the record, he scraped together a solid 68 on Sunday, kicking him back into the Top 20. Would he watch the playoff? “I suppose I’ll watch some of it,” said the deflated local favorite. “It’s part of my punishment.”

Speaking of which, the USGA meted out its expected lashes in a different way at Torrey, using the course’s longest-ever stature, sometimes tricky angles and Rees Jones-reworked greens to keep the leaders right around par. The fairways were wider, the rough penal but not impossible, and light winds all week kept the pins in play, though as the course dried out, even the most careful lag putts left testers coming back. Everything turned out as ordered. Rees smiled as he followed the leaders. He’d been vindicated, too. The Open will return to Torrey South. Just one request of the USGA’s traffic managers — can you find a way to avoid the bottlenecks at, say, the confluence of holes 8, 9 and 18? When Tiger, Phil and Adam passed through on Thursday on Friday, you couldn’t move — at all — for a long, long time, and the crush was enough to send somebody over the edge — somebody other than Scott’s caddie, Tony Navarro, that is.

And the Fans?

Nobody went there, however, despite zillions of gallons of beer threatening to slosh the masses toward Riotville. Overall, through the obvious drama and tension, the crowd was boisterous yet light-spirited in that sunny SoCal way, and it was kick hearing longtime Torrey Pines patrons wax proud about their beloved muni — “When I play that hole, I aim there,” some guy would say, then proceed to give his out-of-towner friend a quick rundown of the course’s character traits.

Sure, there was sizeable complement of clueless bozos, but that’s part of the deal. Priceless line from an obvious part-time golf fan as pale-pink-shirted Ernie Els played the brutal par-4 No. 6: “Those Europeans sure like their pink, don’t they?”

By the way, TV doesn’t show the horde of inside-the-ropes media types and VIPs following the big groups. By Sunday afternoon, the gaggle of photographers, scribes, USGA officials, volunteers and assorted bigwigs following Tiger’s march to history had swelled well into the hundreds, eliciting shouts of “Down in front!” and “Do you mind?” from the paying customers. And no, FG wasn’t among that privileged posse; we’d somehow secured a credential, but didn’t rate the money pass.

That’s cool. It was a hoot taking in every round with the rabble. In fact, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

When Will Tiger Return?

Most media types don’t think we’ll see Tiger in competition before next year’s Masters. That’s the safe call, and it makes sense. Knee surgery is no walk in the fairway; even a physical specimen of Tiger’s caliber can’t speed up what nature takes its sweet time to do. Not that he wasn’t bored out of his skull by July 4, scanning the tube and reading and watching his bank account swell by the day, whether he plays or not. Not that he’s not burning to get back out there, or at least beat some balls with Hank Haney standing behind him, nodding. That could be in the cards by this fall. In the meantime, there’s the occasional morsel of information, maybe a quick on-air phone conversation with Tiger during the current PGA Tour event, maybe a dose of educated guessing from some talking head. And there’s Johnny Miller, voicing what a lot of us are hoping against hope:

“I sort of wish Tiger would pull a Willis Reed for the Ryder Cup, just show up on Monday and say, ‘Can I be on the team?’ Wouldn’t that be something? He might get bored.”

We doubt it would happen, although Tiger is notorious for ignoring doctors’ orders. If he’d listened to them last spring, he would have skipped the one U.S. Open he just had to win, was destined to win. Then where would we be? Congratulating Rocco or Lee Westwood, perhaps. That would be great, but it wouldn’t be the same.Will He Ever Beat Jack’s Record?

Tiger’s latest lightning bolt puts him at 14 professional majors at age 32, far ahead of where Jack was at the same age. There’s no doubt his knee will fully recover and an excellent chance that it’ll be stronger than it’s ever been since its superstar owner turned pro at the end of 1996. In other words, Tiger hasn’t come close to reaching his peak as a performer. Most of the greats truly hit their stride in their mid-30s (think Phil) and carry it into their 40s (think Vijay). Assuming he doesn’t lose interest and barring an unforeseen mishap, the next 10 years could make the last 10 look like Little League, and we’ll all look back on Torrey’s Open as the turning point.

Of course, Tiger doesn’t allow himself to think that way. His La Jolla journey reminded us that he’s the ultimate grinder who prefers to build his legend on the pure rock of persistence — one major, one round, one shot at a time. So while we still believe 25 majors is the number, we’ll give him the final self-effacing word on his pursuit of Nicklaus. “Well, to be only four back, it’s hard to believe I’m in this situation. It’s hard to believe I’ve had this nice a run in my career and hopefully it will continue and I’m going to keep practicing, keep trying to grind and get better. As far as the ramifications [of the knee], I’m not really good about listening to doctor’s orders too well. Hey, I won this thing, so it is what it is.”

What’s Next for Rocco?

No matter what happens, Rocco has earned his place in Tiger history (which is on a different level from the rest of mortal golf history). Watching him stretch his spine for each shot, showing consummate touch around the greens, draining bombs and doing it all with that bright-eyed grin of his — and, more often than not, bending his playing partner’s ear, Tiger included — he couldn’t help but get the crowd on his side. Nor could he hide that he was having the time of his life.

“It’s been amazing. Yeah. Truthfully. I’m disappointed a little that I didn’t beat him. Just disappointed. Not upset. But the only thing I take from this is I gave him the best I had and it wasn’t quite good enough, but it almost was. It wasn’t like I got my butt handed to me today. I didn’t want that to happen. And I didn’t. I know he obviously wanted to win, but I think he enjoyed the crap out of this competition. I certainly did. And I know that I still can do this stuff and I want to try that again, sometime, somewhere.”

It’s hard to imagine Mediate finding himself in exactly that kind of thrillride again. As it stands, he’s still riding the wave of newfound celebrity and playing some of the best golf of his long career. He was tied for the lead after the first round of the British Open, his trusty physical therapist snapping his tricky vertebrae back into line on the 11th hole, and he offered that even if had he gone on to win at Royal Birkdale, it wouldn’t approach in sheer satisfaction what had transpired five weeks earlier, half a world away. What happened at Torrey, he said, “Was the most amazing experience of my life on the golf course, period. Nothing will ever be close to that.��We’re with you, brother.

What’s Next for the Tour?

That’s an easy one: Tim Finchem and company holds its collective breath and prays that their franchise player — the world’s franchise player, soon to become the first billionaire in sporting history — returns with his talent, desire, aura and moneymaking mojo intact. As for the rest of the guys? They’ll sort out this year’s FedEx Cup champion, try to bring the Ryder Cup back to the states and do their best not to look too far down the road, preferring to grab the booty while the king sleeps.

“When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” Miller says. “There’s a good chance that somebody like Brandt Snedeker or Camilo Villegas will get hot; the young players will turn it on. Vijay is still a really good player but has maybe has seen his best days. Phil has some great golf in him, but he’s getting up there, too. It’s interesting to see — will it be a European? They’re good.”

Maybe it’ll be Anthony Kim, who seems to share Tiger’s confidence and, as a fellow Californian, has modeled his game after that of the master. Maybe Kenny Perry can keep it going and give the middle-agers a gasp of fleeting glory. Maybe there’s a kid out there, ready to pounce. Maybe. At any rate, Miller doesn’t think the Tour can afford to be Tigerless for long, and it’s hard to disagree.

“I’m hoping Phil will step it up and carry the responsibility of keeping the Tour going,” Miller said. “The Tour is going to be hurting a lot more than people know. A lot of tournaments, the FedEx Cup and Tour Championship … nobody’s bigger than the Tour, it will go on, but if anybody’s ever come close to being bigger than the Tour, it’s Tiger. And a lot of these tournaments who thought they’d bought their way into getting Tiger to show up, they’re out of luck, aren’t they? TV ratings will go down quite a bit, unless somebody like Phil steps it up, or somebody like Rocco stays hot and people fall in love with him.”

Somebody like … somebody to … somebody will. Sorry. No, they won’t. There’s nobody like Tiger, and this U.S. Open, out there on the cliffs of his kingdom, proved it. Once and for all. FG

TIGER UNDER THE KNIFE

Three weeks after what he called his greatest major victory to date, Tiger Woods was going crazy at home, putting in way too much tube time. “I have spent most of my mornings watching Wimbledon, the afternoon watching AT&T and the evenings watching the U.S. Olympic Trials,” he wrote in his web newsletter over July 4 holiday weekend. “I also read and play video games. Anything to get me through the day.”

We can see it now: Tiger sitting wistfully on his $10,000 sofa, his rebuilt knee propped up on the table, while Sam scurries by, zeroing in on the old man’s oversized trophy cabinet. Pops watches as his newly polished U.S. Open hardware tips and nearly tumbles on the little one’s head, and there ain’t a dang thing he can do about it. Elin sweeps in to save the girl from harm and move her husband’s most prized cup to date onto a higher shelf. Then she heads back into the kitchen make Tiger some lunch — hold the carbs, please. It’s protein time. Anything to goose the mending process.

But there are few if any shortcuts with knee surgery. Don’t lose that remote, Tiger. This is gonna take some time. “Somewhere between three and four months,” offers Dr. James Gladstone, chief of sports medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, who spoke with FG on June 24, the day of Tiger’s reconstructive surgery. “In the extreme earliest, two months, your muscles are strong enough and coordinated enough that you can do some running. But any real, hard-core pivoting on that knee, I would say at the very, very earliest would be four months. That’s probably pushing it.”

We were at the Open. We followed Tiger all five days, saw him limping, saw him use his putter as a cane, denying that it was as bad as it really was, and doing the Tiger thing. Obviously he was in pain.

There are two issues because supposedly he also had stress fractures. Those in and of themselves could have been more painful and wouldn’t have anything to do with his ACL. When your ACL is gone, it hurts like hell. But once you recover from that, the problem is that your knee is not stable, or may not be stable, though it doesn’t typically hurt you. On the other hand, with the way he twists around on that left leg when he drives the ball, it’s possible that he was feeling some instability with the way the side bone was sliding on the shin bone when he pivots around. But my guess is that the pain came more from those stress fractures.

Any ligament attaches two bones together across a joint. The ACL is the main, or central, pivot ligament of the knee and it essentially prevents the shin bone from sliding forward and rotating around the side bone. You really need it in any sport that requires quick starting or stopping or any pivoting, twisting, cutting — soccer, skiing, football, professional tennis. In theory, someone with a torn ACL can play golf as much as they want, but I think when you drive up to that higher level and you’re swinging the way he swings, it can become as harsh or even harsher than some of the other sports.

What does the surgery entail? Are they actually reconnecting that ligament?

Yes, that ligament. Unfortunately when you tear it, because of the environment of that joint and the fluid in there, it can’t heal, and trying to sew the two ends together doesn’t work. So you actually have to put something in there to replace the ligament. We use a tendon that either comes from yourself or from someone who died and donated their tissues. [Tiger’s came from his own right hamstring]. Then you drill a hole from outside of the joint in, another hole from the shin bone, and then another hole from inside the joint out on the thighbone side — that hole is really more of a pocket. You slide the tendon up across the two holes so that the central part of the tendon becomes the new ligament. You secure that into place either with screws or buttons.

Is there any chance of the body rejecting that tendon?

No. There’s perhaps a 2 percent chance of what we call failure of biologic incorporation. That tendon is supposed to be healing and becoming a ligament. The fibers of the tendon, the collagen fibers, have to grow a bit and that’s normal. In 2 percent or less, they don’t heal. So you’re left with something that’s in the right place but not providing the support for the joint. But in theory, no.

Does Tiger’s extreme conditioning and athleticism mean he’ll recover quicker?

The healing part is the same whether it is for Tiger or the normal person walking down the street. There’s no difference there. The biology is the same. Where the biggest difference is, is in the rehab, the strengthening and conditioning you can do around the ligament while protecting it initially and once you’re ready to go, pushing the rehab as much as is appropriate. So a guy like Tiger or some other super high-level athlete can put in the time, effort and have the drive to do so. He’s looking at a three-month period of healing for that tendon to become a ligament. And in the meantime, trying to get the swelling down, get his range of motion back and getting his muscles, especially the quadriceps and anterior thigh muscles firing again. Following that, he’s really working on strengthening. It can take up to a full year, even in people who are conditioning in the right way and really hard, to really regain your strength.

Tiger’s always been a runner. In the future, would he be better off taking up cycling instead?

Once it’s all said and done? No. He said he tore it running last year. That must have been a freak accident. Perhaps he stepped in a hole and twisted his foot or something and that torqued his knee. Most people’s ACLs are not at risk running.