Nicklaus' record just got a lot harder to catch
Posted: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:29 PM
Jack Nicklaus’ record just got a lot farther away.
I know Tiger Woods isn’t thinking that way, but that’s the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the news that Woods put his left knee under the surgeon’s knife for the third time in his career and the second time since 2003. Now, Tiger’s race is no longer just against Nicklaus’ record of 18 major victories. It’s against time.
Before this news, I figured Tiger had eight years – until he’s 40 – to collect the six major titles he needs to pass the Golden Bear. Now, he’d better plan on getting it done in three or four. He’s still young in years – 32 – but that knee is already ancient. And once it goes totally, so does he.
Back in February and March, when he was tearing up the Tour, he looked like a good bet to win at least two more majors this year. He himself talked about winning all four. But now he has to get back into shape and regroove his swing. That doesn’t happen overnight.
For starters, forget about the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. Just a couple of days ago, I’d given him that victory on a course he may as well own. But that was before today’s news. The terse item from the Associated Press said that Woods will need four to six weeks to recover.
The Open is eight weeks away.
I’m not saying he can’t win the Open, but let’s be reasonable about this. He can’t start hitting golf balls again for a month or more. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to get his game back together. Overnight, he went from favorite to long shot. That whittles the potential major harvest this year down to two, and with fresh competition finally coming into the game, it’s not reasonable to expect him to win more than one of them. That would leave him still five away from the record he covets.
I don’t know exactly how many surgeries are in any one knee, but three is getting up there. I’m also no exercise physiologist, but I can’t help but think all the running he does to keep in shape and all the golf balls he hits – putting torsion on that knee on his follow through – is good for the joint’s long-term health.
We tend to think of arthroscopic procedures as the surgical magicians going in and making everything better, and if Tiger’s problem were a torn ACL, that might be the case. The recovery would take up to a year, but at least it would be fixed and likely to stay that way.
But he’s having bits and pieces of tissue – probably cartilage – snipped out. The knee doesn’t get better. It just gets worse at a slower rate, because you’re removing the aggravating bits and pieces, but you’re not curing anything.
And when you take things out, other things rub together and deteriorate. Arthritis isn’t far behind, and after that it’s a knee replacement, and I’m not positive on this, but I don’t think that’s good for a golfing career.
I don’t know how long the knee will hold up or how many more surgeries he can take. But it seems now that the knee had something to do with his less-than-stellar performance at the Masters. My friend Eastside Al told me on Sunday that he thought Tiger was wincing when he climbed out of a couple bunkers on Augusta National.
My friend has also been saying for years that 18 is not as sure a shot as we’ve been making it. We’ve treated Tiger’s assumption of the title Greatest Golfer Ever as an inevitability. The only condition we’ve put on that prediction is, “If he stays healthy.”
And now that comes into serious play. The last repair lasted almost four years. This one probably won’t last that long. And while it may be relatively easy to play football with pain, it’s damned hard to play golf when you know at the end of every swing your knee is going to send a jolt of agony through your body.
The positive development – for the fans, if not for him – is that this injects a whole lot more urgency and interest into his quest. We can no longer assume that he’ll play another 10 years at a high level; we can’t even assume he’ll play another three at this level. We can expect that many years, but we can’t assume them.
So every major tournament is bigger for him and more compelling for us. And each one he doesn’t win brings him closer to the time he won’t be able to win. His quest for the record was a victory march, complete with brass bands and girls in spangled leotards. Now it’s a race, and a desperate one at that.
