Tiger's injury a major scare for golf

by Ian O'Connor

Updated: April 16, 2008, 5:09 PM EST 641 comments

Tiger has surgery

After a second-place finish at the Masters, Tiger Woods underwent arthroscopic knee surgery on Tuesday. He is expected to be out at least a month.

Get well, Tiger:

• Send Tiger get-well wishes right here

News:

Photos:

• Battle for the green jacket
• Tiger's big Saturday move

Analysis:

• O'Connor: A world without Tiger
• Golfweek: Be very afraid
• Rosenberg: Tiger's big blemish
• Tait: Did Tiger tempt the golf gods?

Video:

"There is really never a good time for an athlete — especially one of Tiger's caliber — to take weeks off from competition during the season ..." Finchem said on his tour's Web site.

What the commish really meant to say was this: "We are a long par-five beyond screwed."

It's one thing for Zach Johnson and Trevor Immelman to win the Masters in back-to-back years. It's quite another for the Johnsons and Immelmans of the world to carry a faceless tour of grinders from stop to stop, pulling their baseball caps over their eyes and boring everyone to tears with a mind-numbing procession of pars.

While assessing his sport in the early days of the TV age, right when Arnold Palmer was cutting a striking figure in America's living rooms, Chi Chi Rodriguez once said that "golf without Arnie would be like Gunsmoke without Matt Dillon."

"There's no Gunsmoke without Matt Dillon."

There's no PGA Tour without Tiger Woods.

Finchem knows it. Woods knows it. Every Tom, Dick and Vijay knows it. So when Tiger went in Tuesday for arthroscopic surgery on a left knee that's had two previous encounters with a surgeon's blade, the commissioner had himself a full-blown DEFCON 1 crisis.

Ever since Woods became the most dominant player of his time, of all time, Finchem has feared the day when Tiger would be going, going, gone. Yes, there is a downside to having your entire sport orbit around the world's most recognizable star.

He leaves, and suddenly millions of interested observers leave right with him.

Ask David Stern how much fun he had when Michael Jordan went off to play bush-league baseball in Birmingham. The Rockets and Knicks mud-wrestled their way through the '94 Finals, and you couldn't fill a freight elevator with the amount of fans who bothered to watch.

The NBA was spoiled by the mass appeal of Jordan, a Maybelline Man who covered all blemishes. When Michael traded in his spikes for his Air Jordans and announced his return to basketball with two words — "I'm back" — Stern all but ordered referees to only disqualify him from a game on his seventh foul.

Woods has skipped tournaments before, lots of them, because he builds his entire schedule around the majors and — like Jack Nicklaus before him — doesn't care much about winning in Milwaukee. Tiger's absence automatically gives a Tour event the feel of a junior varsity scrimmage.

Just by not showing up, Woods helped kill off the International, the Tour event at Castle Pines that used — all together now — a modified Stableford scoring system that couldn't convince Tiger to modify his schedule.

"There is an outstanding player in the form of Tiger Woods," the founder of the International, Jack Vickers, said when his tournament went down. "When he is playing, the ratings are great, and when he is not playing the ratings are not so hot.

"When we talk to potential sponsors, they call their advertising people and the next thing we know we're talking about ratings, and that makes it tough. The International just hasn't fit into Tiger's schedule."

But this isn't about Tiger hurting an event's bottom line. This is about Tiger completely disappearing from a sport that doesn't offer a defining rival — a Palmer for his Nicklaus, or a Frazier for his Ali — who can fill the void until Woods' knee recovers.

Phil Mickelson is no longer up to the task, or so it seems. Same for Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, the other members of a Big Five that wasn't worthy of the label.

Golf is ruled by a Big One. And if that Big One ever suffers a more serious knee or back injury and misses plenty more than four to six weeks, the Tour will be about as popular in the States as Greco-Roman wrestling.

"I made the decision to deal with the pain and schedule the surgery for after the Masters," Woods said on his Web site. "The upside is that I have been through this process before and know how to handle it. I look forward to working through the rehabilitation process and getting back to action as quickly as I can."

If you think Tiger is looking forward to that, how about his commissioner?

"Of course we're disappointed when Tiger is unable to compete in a PGA Tour event," Finchem said.

You think?

"We wish him the best toward a speedy recovery," Finchem added, "and look forward to welcoming him back to the Tour when he is ready and able to compete."

Let's face it: Golf is unwatchable when Tiger isn't in the field. It was that way when his father's death caused him to miss nine weeks in 2006, and it will be that way again while Woods tries to recover in time for the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

Meanwhile, Tiger will almost certainly miss the Wachovia Championship and the Players Championship, two biggies that will have the unmistakable feel of smallies with Woods sitting them out.

Finchem can find a measure of comfort in the fact that Tiger is a quick healer and the most physically fit player on tour. He can rejoice over the fact that Woods is 32, not 42, with another 10 to 15 years of scheduled dominance left in his bag.

But make no mistake: This scare rocked the commissioner to his core. The moment Dr. Thomas Rosenberg cut into Tiger's left knee at Healthsouth Surgery Center in Park City, Utah, the tour was reduced to a hobbled mess.

Golf had better develop a charismatic star or three and fast. The sport can't live forever on a man in a red shirt who will get older and more vulnerable, just like the rest of us.