“My body is a temple” is a phrase that this correspondent has never used. The increasingly creaking, crumbling and shoogling structure that houses all the internal cranks, pulleys and pistons required to keep me ticking over on a daily basis would make the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis look neatly pointed.
Despite this fairly precarious state of affairs, however, I’ve never endured any form of surgery. Indeed, the most complex procedure performed on this scribe was the removal of a particularly stubborn splinter picked up during an ill-judged slide down a rustic banister and even that run-of-the-mill process, involving tweezers, a splashing of rubbing alcohol and more red faces than a glassblower’s convention, left me shrieking like a pantomime dame.
Of course, doctors and surgeons these days nonchalantly perform the kind of everyday miracles that would have had them either deified as saviours of mankind or drowned in the village pond for witchcraft if they’d carried them out in the Middle Ages.
Now, I’m no doctor but if someone had to have three operations on their gammy back, I’d be a bit hesitant to use the word “successful”. Yet, after his first “successful” operation in 2014, Tiger Woods had more “successful” probings and pokings in September but, only a few days ago, he unveiled he’d had another procedure to alleviate discomfort caused by that “successful” surgery which clearly wasn’t as “successful” as that “successful” operation was made out to be.
Woods will turn 40 next month. Last Sunday, the evergreen Gary Player clocked up 80 years and remains fitter than a buffed up fiddle thanks to a healthy diet of various elixirs, twigs and pills allied to a robust daily regime of press-ups, push-ups, squats, crunches and lunges. “I am turning 80, but feel 40,” said the sprightly South African. In comparison, Woods, currently bedridden following his latest surgery and probably left wincing more by the stinging criticism he has received in the autobiography of his former caddie, Steve Williams, must feel about as old as Methuselah’s granny.
When Player set out on the professional path over 50 years ago, he was one of the first to embrace a programme of exercise and weight training. He also exercised a bit of caution too. “Your body needs rest, so you don't push yourself towards an injury,” he noted. Wise words which Woods, a man who pushed the physical boundaries to the limits and beyond more than any other player, perhaps could have heeded. The ailing former world No 1 recently conceded that his latest recovery is going to be “tedious and long” in a frank assessment of his health that was much more downbeat that his previous self-appraisals. Reality may finally be hitting home. After his first back surgery some 19 months ago – yes, that “successful” one – Woods was back in action within three months when other players had taken a year or so to make a recovery. His return was fleeting and more niggles led to another period on the sidelines. He made another high-profile comeback at the Masters this year, where he had a morale-boosting tie for 17th, and that heightened his expectations and accelerated his desire to get back to full-fitness and contend in the biggest events . Of course, most folk will tell you that the one thing you can’t do with a back problem is rush the recovery process. Throw in the work he was trying to do on a new swing and you had a perfect formula for more aches, pains and anguish: surgery plus swing processes plus impatience divided by the single-mindedness of a born winner equals the square root of dispiriting decline.
Competing at the highest level when not physically up to the task also brought about a crisis in confidence. Prior to the 2015 campaign, Woods had posted just one score in the 80s during his professional career, and that came amid a tempest at the 2002 Open. In the current campaign, he had stumbled to three scores in the 80s while duffing chips here, hoiking drives there and knifing approaches everywhere during a series of bumbling performances that were a bit like watching a bloated Elvis mumbling his way through a succession of Vegas ballads. Woods is currently languishing down in 362nd place on the world rankings. At the head of the global order, golf’s youth movement, led by Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Jason Day, continues to disappear off into the distance. "I want to play at an elite level with the new kids for a long, long time,” said Woods. As usual, they were admirable, ambitious yet somewhat fanciful sentiments from an intensely driven champion who will be finding his reduced reality in the game almost impossible to accept.
The usual pontificating pantomime – “Tiger's finished … oh no he isn’t” – will continue to roar on but goodness knows when we will next see Woods on the tees. In his pomp, winning was simply par for the course. The only certainty with the Tiger these days is the uncertainty.
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