Tiger’s absence will add intrigue to the myth

One thought does occur when considering the staggering (no pun intended) story of Tiger Woods. Any game that can be played on a broken leg is not that hard.

Otherwise, this is all too incredible, a mixture of courage and folly, the eventual result still to be seen.

When Woods was dickering with his golf game, a game that seemed in no need of repair, changing his swing or reinventing his method, then we were ready to scoff.

Or when he removed himself from golf for great chunks of time, it violated all the rules of competition and readiness. Yet rust, like doubt, never collected on the man.

How trivial those concerns seem now compared to this. This is real physical damage, at least twice as bad what we were led to believe, so serious that when next we see Woods on the tee, it will be on another calendar.

An Olympics, a World Series, most likely a Super Bowl as well, will all be history, and golf will have tiptoed through our lives without much sound, as it did for that time between Jack Nicklaus and Woods.

This is confirmation of the inevitable, that flesh melts, that even the greatest cannot escape the attrition of life, certainly premature in the case of Woods, too young for this, too gifted.

His defined muscles unnecessary for golf

Woods had transformed his body, so lanky and lithe during the Tiger Slam, into a model of physical perfection, with muscles unnecessary for the game he plays but striking in a golf shirt.

Whether all that work with weights and running contributed to his problems can only be guessed at, but that would be a good guess.

And whether he will return as good as ever supplies additional intrigue to a myth that has grown in unforeseen directions.

Two parallels come to mind — the ban on Muhammad Ali at the very height of his powers and the escape of Michael Jordan to baseball after the death of his father.

The absences of the greatest figures in their sports — each equally as famous as Woods at the time — made for an odd sense of marking time, the empty space occupied but by pretenders, not to be taken seriously, like seat fillers at an awards show.

Maybe Monica Seles could be included here, she knifed by a nut and forever forced to flinch at strangers.

This is not to begin to understand the effect on the athlete, to be out of the routine, to have a life altered from what it was, to be exposed to perspective, that the world is wider than the next shot.

Returning to top form is not always possible

Others have left and returned at the top.

Consider baseball ballplayers in war — Ted Williams, twice — or Ben Hogan, whose injuries were much greater than those of Woods.

Most tennis players who left early — Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe — never returned to previous form, though by age they should have still been great. How often did Sugar Ray Leonard come back, never to be what he was?

Ali and Jordan, of course, matched all they had been, even if later they soiled a bit of their legends.

George Foreman reinvented himself and had two equal careers.

It has to be much easier to do this in golf than in any other sport — see my original premise — and anyone with the will and sheer guts that Woods showed in not just surviving but winning the U.S. Open has to be given the benefit of the doubt.

As to how foolish Woods was to have played when his doctors advised him not to, when a career was at stake rather than just a tournament, even the Open, which he had already won twice, that will not be known until Woods recuperates and gets back on tour.

If his knee, or any peripheral damage, will have a lasting effect, if he becomes merely good instead of great, if he plays now at the level of all those other very good golfers, if he is no longer Tiger Woods plopping a ball into the hole from impossible rough or birdieing the last hole of the tournament twice when nothing else would do, that’s not such a bad fate, either.

XBernie Lincicome is a columnist for the Rocky Mountain News. Contact him at lincicomeb(@)rockymountainnews.com.