Back to the Future

Only two things can stop Tiger -- injury or a bad marriage, Dan Jenkins, 2001

As if you needed any further proof of why Dan Jenkins is a national treasure.  I don't have much to add to what you already know from the press accounts of Tiger's surgery in Utah, except to note that he didn't so much as call or drop by while he was in my 'hood.

First, he's obviously been struggling with the back pain for longer than we've known, going back to at least last August's PGA.  This from friend Notah Begay in Michael Rosenberg's golf.com article:

This pain has been going on for quite some time. It hasn’t just happened in the last few weeks. There has been a research process, interviews, a lot of different people doing this. If this doesn’t get cleared up, it is certainly something that can hamper performance. I think that is what he is starting to realize.

The optimistic take is that clearing this up will allow him to resume the Nicklaus hunt, as per Jason Sobel:

This is not the end of the line. It’s too shortsighted to believe that Woods won’t recover from this injury as he has in the past. It’s too careless to think he won’t return as the game’s best player once again. 

That’s probably not the popular opinion right now. You might think he’s done. You might think the chase to catch Jack is over. You might think he’s doomed – if such a term is the proper description – to be the second-leading major winner ever. 

The most riveting subplot in sports will only become more intriguing when he returns.

And Bob Harig:

But if Woods, 38, can put aside the short-term disappointment, getting to the bottom of his back issues, getting it fixed, and moving forward can actually be a good thing for the 14-time major champion. 

That is not to say he'll come back ready to win at Pinehurst or Royal Liverpool or Valhalla. Or that he'll even be ready for the Ryder Cup. 

And yet it offers the hope that his back pain, which has bothered him in some form since last year's PGA Championship, can be alleviated and he can get back to the business of playing golf at a high level.

(h/t Shackelford for those links).

Color me a tad skeptical, as this is far from the only breakdown in Woods' body we're seeing and the sound of the clock ticking is only getting louder.

Now, the question on everyone's mind is when might we see the Striped on again?  There's no firm timeline, but for a proxy Shack takes us back to Graham Delaet's similar surgery a few years back and this timeline:

Q. After the surgery, how long before you were able to pick up a club?

GRAHAM DeLAET: It was at the two-month Mark where I started hitting little chips and putts and half-wedges, kind of thing. By the time -- it wasn't probably until November that I could really like go after a drive as hard as I could, or really lash at one in the deep rough kind of thing.

DeLaet, approximately ten years younger than Woods, had his surgery on January 3rd of that year.

And do check out this Golf Central interview with Dr. Ara Suppiah, which features a jelly donut as a proxy for Tiger's back (sorry, but it's again a form of video that Blogger will not allow me to embed).  He suggests that it will likely be 6-8 weeks before Tiger can chip and putt (bye bye Pinehurst) and perhaps four months before he can hit a driver at full speed (adios Hoylake and don't prepay for the house at Valhalla).  Interestingly, he also has some caution regarding the heavy lifting and squats that Tiger famously loves and about which I've previously expressed skepticism.