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I’m not going to be the first person to talk about Tiger’s knee injury and I’m sure I won’t be the last either, but I just don’t think enough can be said about what this new information about his knee means. The fact that he played 91 holes of golf on the longest course in US Open history with ONE LEG is just dumbfounding. A torn ACL and two (TWO!) stress fractures of his tibia all on his left leg and the guy still managed to WIN THE US OPEN!? This is more than the stuff of legend. This is a transcendant performance in sport. There are maybe 5 other performances that could be mentioned in the same breath as this IN THE HISTORY OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS. The man walked 7600 yards five days in a row (that’s over 20 miles) and managed to stop every couple of hundred yards and put an enourmous amount of stress on a leg that essentially didn’t work and still did all of that better than anyone else (with two completely healthy legs) did. I know that I’m gushing and that it’s pretty clear that I’m a little biased, but that was simply unbelievable.

I have to admit that it took me a couple of hours to get to the point where I was gushing about how incredible his performance at the Open was. This is because my first reaction was feeling cheated of what was shaping up to be his best season yet. Obviously now we know his season would not have been the one we were anticipating, but think of what Tiger had done so far this year and if his knee was getting better like we all thought (rather than in shreds like it actually was/is). His season would have been unreal with another Tiger-Slam well within reach and losing in another tournament looking very unlikely.

So that’s why my initial reaction was to feel cheated out of what could have been. You can tell when you are watching Tiger that you are watching a once in a lifetime (hell, once in forever) athlete so to not have him out there on the golf course for around 9 months or however long it is going to take is kind of a bummer. Ultimately though, with Tiger’s drive he’ll be back and I’m betting he’ll be back to win. In the meantime, we’ll have to enjoy watching the highlights of the US Open, still shake our heads in disbelief at how unbelievable that performance was and wait for another golfer to seize this opportunity without Tiger.

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