Tiger’s Ryder move raises fresh queries
Print Edition
TIGER Woods’ decision to rule himself out of contention for next month’s Ryder Cup was a wise one given his struggles since undergoing back surgery in March, but it also raises fresh concerns over the former world No. 1’s playing future.
Questions will undoubtedly be raised as to whether he decided to return to competition too soon after having a procedure to treat a pinched nerve in his lower back.
Though he says he has always recovered quickly from surgeries, he looked tournament rusty and a shadow of his former self in his last four PGA Tour appearances, twice missing the cut and once withdrawing midway through the final round.
At the age of 38, Woods is perhaps also paying the price of long hours spent on the range and in the gym, where he has always pushed himself punishingly hard.
The 14-time major winner has had four knee surgeries over the years, along with a string of other injuries, and undergone several swing changes in a bid to limit the more severe effects of the golf swing on his body.
He famously won the most recent of his major titles in a playoff for the 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines where he defied doctors’ orders to compete after suffering a double stress fracture in his left shinbone two weeks before the tournament.
Yet former PGA Championship winner Paul Azinger believes Woods’ problems this year are not purely physical, and that perhaps he has spent too much time on yet another overhaul of his swing.
“He has gone from the artist to the engineer,” Azinger said during last week’s PGA Championship where he was an analyst for Golf Channel. “It is difficult to watch a Vincent van Gogh paint by numbers. We want to see Tiger come back and get all of this stuff out of his head.”
Woods missed the cut at the PGA Championship, only the fourth time he has done so as a professional in the majors, having pronounced himself fit on the eve of the tournament.
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