{"id":1139,"date":"2011-07-07T07:48:51","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T14:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidhbarrett.com\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2012-03-06T07:16:19","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T14:16:19","slug":"tigerwoodsmildstrainisamajorproblem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/golf\/lifestyle\/1139\/tigerwoodsmildstrainisamajorproblem","title":{"rendered":"Tiger Woods’ “Mild” Strain is a Major Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tiger Woods has been out almost three months and he's still not telling much about his injury. Photo copyright Icon SMI.<\/p><\/div>\n

Here\u2019s what Tiger Woods said about his injury earlier this week in his announcement that he would miss the British Open: \u201cIn April, Woods was diagnosed with a Grade 1 mild medial collateral ligament sprain to his left knee and a mild strain to his left Achilles tendon.\u201d <\/p>\n

This sent me to the Internet to look up \u201cGrade 1 sprain.\u201d I thought it was the least<\/em> severe type of sprain. Yet here we are nearly three months after Woods suffered the injuries in the third round of the Masters, and he\u2019s still on the sidelines. My search confirmed that Grade 1 is the mildest sprain or strain of a ligament or tendon. <\/p>\n

Woods may be calling it a Grade 1 strain, but what we have here is a Grade 3 strain of credulity. I\u2019m not a habitual Woods basher, but this stonewalling on giving any information about his injury simply isn\u2019t excusable. <\/p>\n

Even now, in July, he\u2019s only telling us what the diagnosis was in April. What about what the doctors have said since then? Woods has said, \u201cThe doctors have advised me not to play,\u201d but hasn\u2019t said what the doctors have been telling him since April about the nature of his injury. <\/p>\n

The fact that Woods played\u2014and played well\u2014the day after suffering the injury is an indication that seemed to be a mild injury initially. So is the fact that immediately after the Masters he traveled to Asia on a promotional tour for Nike. He didn\u2019t play any rounds of golf, but he gave clinics, walked around a lot, and sat on long airplane flights. <\/p>\n

Most injuries get better with time. This one seems to have gotten worse. He did not even hit a golf ball in the four weeks between the Masters and the Players Championship, where he withdrew after nine holes saying he aggravated the injury on his first tee shot. <\/p>\n

As of last week, he hadn\u2019t hit a golf ball in the six weeks after the Players. In his announcement this week about skipping the British Open, he did not say that he had hit a ball yet, and his agent, Mark Steinberg, did not reveal whether he had. <\/p>\n

This is a mild strain that has become a major problem. We\u2019re talking about a knee that has been operated on four times, including one major surgery. And an Achilles that gave him problems a couple of years ago, although he said nothing about it at the time. At age 35, with a lot of mileage on his body after starting his career so early and with a swing that puts a lot of pressure on his left knee, one has to wonder whether he will physically be the same again. <\/p>\n

Woods certainly isn\u2019t telling us. In late May before a promotional press conference for the AT&T National, which he hosts, Woods tweeted that he would give $1 million to the Tiger Woods Foundation if no one asked him about his knee. I suppose this might have been an attempt at humor, but even so it was one of the most absurd things an athlete has said or tweeted this year. The press had<\/em> to ask about the knee, it was the most newsworthy item of discussion. (Woods did give the $1 million anyway.) <\/p>\n

Now he won\u2019t tell us if he\u2019s picked up a club yet, while making pie-in-the-sky pronouncements like, \u201cI think my best years are still ahead of me.\u201d <\/p>\n

In team sports, the team is responsible for releasing injury information about a player. In golf, it\u2019s up to the player. That sometimes puts players in a funny position. If they reveal that they\u2019ve been bothered by an injury, it can sound like an excuse for poor play. So I understand why Woods might not have been forthcoming about it when he was playing through Achilles problems the first time. <\/p>\n

This is different, though. It\u2019s not a case of playing through an injury, it\u2019s a matter of not being able to play at all. And there\u2019s no good reason for not telling us why. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s what Tiger Woods said about his injury earlier this week in his announcement that he would miss the British… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":1140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[252524,18],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pga-tour-2","category-lifestyle","tag-tiger-woods"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2011\/07\/WoodsContemplates1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/1516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/davidhbarrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}