This is the day that Tiger Woods got old. How he deals with that
indignity, adapts his game and his personality to it, will define how
much satisfaction and success he'll get from the remainder of his golf
career. If he keeps fighting the messages that his knees, Achilles',
neck, elbow and now back have sent him for the past six years, he's more
likely to end up with 19 surgeries than 19 majors.In sports where you run, jump and might get knocked cold, 38-year-old athletes have all come to terms with the aging process far earlier than Woods. If they refuse to compromise with age, they wash out of their sport entirely.
Woods doesn't seem to realize it, but he's perilously close to the level of irreversible injury that cut short Seve Ballesteros' competitive years well before he was 40 and made Freddie Couples an occasional golfer, plea-bargaining with his barking back - can I play, please - for the past 20 years.
On Tuesday, Woods said he would miss next week's Masters after surgery Monday to relieve a pinched nerve that's bothered him for months. That's just the latest back-stab in Woods's physical deterioration since 2008. Much of it is self-inflicted because he won't use the minimal common sense that is the norm in the NFL, MLB or NBA: modesty in the face of the inevitable. Woods always wants to be compared to such "real" athletes, yet he ignores their lessons.
Because golfers train and perform in a supposedly gentler sport, they expect their 30s to be prime years and their 40s still productive. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer never missed a major championship for which they were eligible until they were 58 and 65 years old, respectively.
But that was then, and this is Woods. He has driven himself like an Olympic athlete and now has paid what would simply be considered a typical price in other sports. Yet in golf, it truly is a shock to see an immortal falling apart so young.
And falling apart Woods is. This will be the fifth major he has missed in seven years. Will he be back for the U.S. Open or even the British Open in July? That's in doubt. If he does play, how well can he do? In two recent majors, coming back from injury, Woods has missed a cut and shot 13-over-par, his worst score as a pro.
His "microdiscectomy" is a procedure usually performed to relieve a herniated disc. Details are sparse from the secretive Woods; this isn't minor. Such surgeries can take months for a full recovery. "It also looks like I'll be forced to miss several upcoming tournaments," Woods already concedes.
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