The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (24 page)

I didn’t talk to Tiger until two days later, when he informed me that he was going to have arthroscopic surgery on his left knee. “Yeah, I’m going to have it cleaned out,” he said. He still made no mention of a torn ACL. My sense of the surgery was that it was intended to be exploratory, to cut away and trim some worn cartilage and to assess the general state of the knee going forward. However, once Dr. Rosenberg went in, he found more damage than expected.

I was shocked to learn of the blown-out ACL. And also saddened. Tiger was coming off a period when everything we’d worked on was solidifying and the wins were coming in bunches. He seemed to be over the distractions of 2007, and had reenergized his work ethic. He hadn’t won at Augusta, but even in a loose performance he’d come excruciatingly close. He was right on the verge of achieving a level both of us had been waiting for, and now, heading into a U.S. Open on a course where Tiger had won more tournaments going back to junior golf than anywhere else, it seemed that all that momentum would be lost.

Golf historians may eventually argue that Tiger would never be quite as good again. Perhaps, but that didn’t prevent him from achieving his greatest victory.

It’s Sunday, May 18, 2008, a month after the knee operation, and I’m sitting at the dinner table with Tiger and Elin at their home in Isleworth. It’s quieter than usual, as Elin has recently instituted a “no television” rule during dinner. Tiger has gone along with the prohibition, but if the intent of the change was to stimulate more conversation, it’s not working tonight.

Tiger rises to get something to drink in the kitchen. About halfway there, he suddenly stops and grimaces, then bends over slightly with his eyes still closed. He holds this position for a full 20 seconds. It’s the same pose that in a few weeks will become familiar to the millions who will watch the U.S. Open.

I look at Elin, who seems as surprised as I am. This isn’t good. I ask Tiger if he is all right. “I just landed on my foot wrong,” he says. “I’m fine.” But the strain in his voice belies the explanation. I don’t want to go negative, but it just comes out. “Tiger, you can’t even walk. How are you going to be able to play?”

I’d arrived in Orlando that day to initiate Tiger’s reentry into competition, his target the Memorial Tournament in less than two weeks. That would be followed by the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, the first round of which was June 12. It was the first day I’d seen Tiger since Sunday of the Masters. We’d spoken on the phone, and he’d indicated that his recovery was going well. But as soon as we got on the golf course, it was clear that he was having problems. He was hitting the ball poorly, but more tellingly, moving slowly with a halting gait. Somehow, he’d lost a lot.

His latest surgery had turned out to be a mixed bag. Although he never specified the reason for the procedure publicly, Tiger had wanted to alleviate pain that had been increasing from the effects of loose cartilage in his left knee joint. Dr. Thomas Rosenberg had cleaned out the cartilage, but he also discovered that Tiger’s left anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)—the thick ligament that connects the thigh bone and the shin bone through the front of the knee joint—was fully torn. It meant that Tiger was without the normal ability to limit side-to-side motion or to keep the leg from straightening too much.

Rosenberg was the same doctor who’d found Tiger’s left ACL to be badly deteriorated in 2002, when he operated on him to remove cysts from his knee. But while Rosenberg was well aware that Tiger would have ongoing knee issues, I was told that he was still surprised to find it fully torn. Tiger had played so well in late 2007 and early 2008, winning nine of 12 tournaments, with two seconds and a fifth, that Rosenberg had expected Tiger to still have a functioning ACL. Once Rosenberg was inside the knee, he considered repairing the ACL on the spot. He didn’t because Tiger was unconscious and couldn’t give his consent. A reconstruction at that time also would have meant that Tiger would have missed the remaining three majors of 2008. There was also the question of whether the new ligament would come from a cadaver or be grafted from the hamstring of the opposite leg, which is the way Tiger would eventually go.

After Rosenberg trimmed away the loose cartilage and left the ACL alone, the plan going forward was for Tiger to rest and rehabilitate for a few weeks, then return to competition and continue to manage the torn ACL through the year’s three remaining majors. He would then undergo major reconstructive surgery and, if all went well, be ready to resume his assault on Jack Nicklaus’s record at the 2009 Masters.

Unfortunately, there was an aspect of the plan that Tiger didn’t consider.

What had allowed him to get by with a torn ACL were the exceptionally strong muscles surrounding his knee, which he’d strengthened with years of lower-body training. The muscles had acted as an imperfect but workable substitute for the ACL, providing enough stability to the knee joint that Tiger wasn’t severely hampered as a golfer, though he would have been in a sport that required running, jumping, or contact.

However, the minor surgery changed things. Immediate atrophy after even minor invasive surgery is normal, and the muscles supporting Tiger’s knee lost their strength as swelling, stiffness, and soreness set in. That caused the joint to become much less stable, to the point that the tips of the tibia, fibula, and femur began to touch where they met at the knee. Ideally, Tiger would have taken more time for his legs to regain their strength and again provide a stable cushion for the joint, but because he was determined to play at the U.S. Open, he began to train and practice while the atrophy was wreaking havoc.

If the U.S. Open hadn’t been at Torrey Pines, he might not have rushed things. But the course on the cliffs of La Jolla was the site of more Tiger victories than any other. He’d begun accumulating titles there as a junior golfer, and after turning professional he’d won the PGA Tour event at Torrey Pines six times. Since I’d been his coach, Tiger had been victorious at the course each of the four times he’d played there. Torrey Pines’ big dimensions suited Tiger. He knew the greens, and he could access winning memories. Torrey Pines had never before held the U.S. Open, and Tiger had been looking forward to the occasion and the opportunity for years.

When he began hitting balls again in mid-May, the jolt to his knee was more jarring than it had been when his surrounding muscles were strong. Despite hitting only a predesignated and reduced number of practice balls each day, and riding a cart as he played the course, the healing process was slow. Two weeks before the Memorial, on the eighteenth hole of a round at Isleworth, Tiger said he hit a 5-iron approach from a downhill lie and felt a crack below his left knee. I arrived two days later, and Tiger clearly wasn’t in good shape. After seeing the state of Tiger’s golf game and the way he doubled over in the kitchen, I didn’t see how he’d be able to be ready for the Open, let alone the Memorial.

The next day, Tiger was worse. On the practice tee, he could hit only four or five balls without needing to sit down in the cart, and he was reduced to using his club as a cane to cover the few yards back to the seat. Certainly, Tiger had verbally exaggerated injuries in the past, but this was about action more than words. He wasn’t complaining, he was just limping. Clearly discouraged, he informed me at lunch that he was pulling out of the Memorial. All his efforts would be focused on playing at Torrey Pines.

I returned home and came back to Orlando on Friday, May 30, after Tiger had undergone an MRI on his knee. The next day, Dr. Rosenberg came in from Utah to evaluate the results and consult with Tiger. He and an associate sat down in the middle of an L-shaped couch in the family room, Tiger and I on opposite ends. Rosenberg opened his laptop on the coffee table and showed us the images, pointing to two small, dark lines at the top of the lower bone connecting to Tiger’s knee. He said the lines represented stress fractures of the left tibia. As he was conveying the bad news, I could see Tiger taking on a blank look that didn’t register any acknowledgment of the fractures. It was as if he were trying to will them away. With Tiger silent, I asked about how such stress fractures are normally treated. Rosenberg said the remedy was four to six weeks on crutches, followed by four more weeks of rehab. Doing the math, I calculated that that length of time would have Tiger still convalescing beyond the British Open and leave too little time to get ready for the PGA Championship in August. My thought was that our season was over, and there was now no point in waiting to fix the ACL.

Finally, Tiger spoke. “I’m playing in the U.S. Open,” he said. “And I’m going to win it.” His tone was so serious that Rosenberg didn’t argue. “Tiger, you can try to play,” he said. “There’s not too much more damage you can do at this point. It’s just a matter of how much pain you can take.”

Tiger answered with a phrase that he’d repeat several times in the next month: “It’s just pain.” Then he started putting his golf shoes on. “C’mon, Hank,” he said. “Let’s go practice.” Realizing that a decision had been made, Rosenberg urged Tiger not to hit full shots for a couple of days in order to let the pain from the stress fractures calm down. He also gave him an elaborate and bulky leg brace that injured football players commonly wear. Tiger put it on, and we rode out in a cart to the practice green, where he chipped and putted for about 45 minutes. The next day, he did the same thing.

On Monday, June 2, Tiger again began hitting balls, keeping the count below 50. It became very clear that the leg brace impaired his ability to transfer his weight from his right to his left side on the downswing. This caused his body rotation to stop, which in turn caused his hands to turn over prematurely in the hitting area. As a result, he was hooking the heck out of the ball. To counteract the brace, I further increased the anti-hook measures that I’d already installed, getting him to point the club farther to the left of the target at the top of his swing, and encouraging him to feel as if he was opening the clubface as he started down. I also reemphasized the importance of avoiding any cocking or tilting of his head on the backswing, urging him to keep his eyes level.

The brace was a major obstacle. That night I spoke to Mark Steinberg. I told him Tiger was giving it his best, but that in the end, I didn’t think he was going to be able to play. Still, Tiger was expressing no doubt, and I realized that I’d never seen him exhibit so much quiet determination. On Tuesday, the day before we were scheduled to leave for California, I decided that if Tiger was going to pull this off, his attitude would have to be one designed to save, rather than expend, energy. “You’re going to have to be the most patient you’ve ever been,” I said. “Because of your leg, you’re going to miss more shots, and you can’t get all upset every time that happens. You’re going to have to accept mistakes and move on.” I was surprised how responsive he was to the message. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. It was so different from the usual noncommittal blank stare. Something different was going on.

Early on Wednesday, Tiger and I flew in his plane from Orlando, arriving at the Carlsbad airport, about 30 miles north of San Diego, before noon. We made the short drive to Torrey Pines, and with no media or fans allowed on the course, Tiger played nine holes in a cart and wearing the brace. The level of his golf wasn’t close to being good enough to contend in the U.S. Open. After the round, Tiger and I drove north about 50 miles. He was going to stay at his home on Newport Coast. I’d stayed there with him before, and thought I’d be doing so again. But in a switch, he told me on the drive up that I’d be in a nearby hotel that Tiger’s office had already booked for me. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, especially because it was a nice hotel.

The next day we played nine holes at Shady Canyon Golf Club in Irvine with the cart and the brace. On Friday we went to Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach, where Tiger had been given playing privileges when he was a junior. He was still having trouble swinging with the brace but played a little more respectably. But on Saturday morning, he was terrible again. He sprayed shots over fences and into hazards, losing six balls in nine holes. He actually ran out of balls after hooking his second shot into the water on the ninth hole. But instead of expressing disgust, he kept his reaction amazingly light. “Wow, ran out of balls,” he said after searching his golf bag. “Not good. Got a little work to do.”

At lunch, Tiger took off his knee brace with a sense of finality, saying, “I can’t play with this thing.” As he was evaluating possibilities, I suggested that Tiger try walking nine holes that afternoon, something he hadn’t done since his operation. “To be ready to play, you’re going to have to start walking sooner or later,” I said. “Let’s see if you can.” We agreed.

As we began the round with me driving the cart and Tiger walking alone down the fairway, I figured there was a good chance that without the brace, and having to stay continuously on his feet, Tiger would soon accept that his dream of playing the Open at Torrey was over. But free of the device, not only did he move pretty well, with just the slightest limp, but his swing was much freer and more rhythmic. He shot even par for the nine holes and hit a lot of good shots. His pain was manageable. It was a huge step forward, and Tiger got a charge out of it.