On Borrowed Time: Tiger Woods Reminds Us How Fragile His Playing Future Has Become

And just like that, things went completely haywire in the Bahamas and the rapidly-aging Tiger Woods has a new ailment — The Achilles Heel.

Tiger sent the interest in the Hero World Open to hell in a hand basket late Monday when he matter-of-factly announced that he’s a no-go for his limited-man field that will begin play without him on Thursday down in balmy Albany.

Tiger is now a dogged victim of yet another health-crusher — ye ole plantar fasciitis.  That’s a painful inflammation in the heel, in this case, the heal on his surgically-mended right leg.  How’d this one happen?  Well, truth be known, most likely those walks on the beach he referred to, albeit briefly.  Walking on sand is more difficult, it’s probably not a good idea if you already have physical challenges and Tiger, who will turn 47 this month, has a plethora of them.

If that wasn’t enough, there were more bombs dropped by Eldrick at his Hero press gathering.

How about the fact that he’s had some more “procedures” since he last spoke to anyone.  And “procedures” is code for surgeries.  Of course he wouldn’t talk about them — he still the Secret Agent Man of the PGA Tour — giving as little info as he can.

Of course the conversation always moves toward his playing schedule and per Tiger his ownself, it looks pretty sparse for 2023:

“The goal is to play just the major championships and maybe one or two more. That’s it. I mean, that’s — physically that’s all I can do — I don’t have much left in this leg, so gear up for the biggest ones and hopefully, you know, lightning catches in a bottle and I’m up there in contention with a chance to win and hopefully I remember how to do that.”

When you read that, it’s growing very, very tough to be optimistic about Tiger ever winning anything again — just walking 72 holes is, in and of itself, a major accomplishment.

Tiger poo-pooed the claim from Rory McIlroy that Rory gave Covid to Tiger prior to the 150th Open Championship:

“I got tested. I was always negative. I was feeling under the weather, yes, wasn’t feeling great the whole week, but I never got a positive test.”

Of course, there’s the ever-present LIV conversation and Tiger was pretty specific on his views:

“There’s a lot of animosity, especially from their leadership. And they want to be a validated tour with world ranking points, and they’re buying up tours around the world. I don’t know what their end game is,” Woods said. “It might be just being an official member of the golf ecosystem and being recognized with world ranking points. I think that’s what their intended goal is.

“They’ve spent probably close to $2 billion this year. Who’s to say they can’t spend $4 (billion) or $5 billion next year? You know, we just don’t know. It’s an endless pit of money.”

Is there any chance of peace talks with LIV?  Tiger was pretty specific there and was on the same page as Rory:

“Greg (Norman) has to go, first of all, and then obviously litigation against us and then our countersuit against them, those would then have to be at a stay as well. So then we can talk, we can all talk freely.”

And if it were to happen, it would have to be sooner than later:   “I don’t know whether it’s going to be me, Rory, or the Tour, or other players being, I wouldn’t necessarily say a peacemaker, but I just think that there’s a window of opportunity for us from both tours to figure this out shortly,” Woods said. “That window’s closing just because the majors are coming up now, and they’re going to have their own criteria for the majors.”

Tiger also had a solid view on “the defectors”:

“It’s a year we didn’t expect to have happen. The animosity, the angst and then the players leaving, and then the way they showed their disregard or disrespect to the Tour that helped them get to that point.  A lot of things I certainly don’t like about (LIV), and there’s certain players that are very up front with it and have declared it, and I respect them for that. But there’s also a flip side to that, too, that I thought was a little bit on the tasteless side.”

Tiger also agreed with everyone who thinks the Official World Golf Rankings are flawed:

“Yeah, OWGR, it’s a flawed system. That’s something we all here recognize. The field at Dubai got less points than Sea Island and more of the top players were there in Dubai, so obviously there’s a flawed system. How do you fix it? You know, those are meetings we’re going to have to have. We’re going to have to have it with World Golf committee and as well as our — the main tours that are involved in it somehow come up with a better system than is in place now.”

A lot to digest from the PGA Tour’s elder (inactive) statesman.

This was the week where millions of eyeballs were going to see the state of Tiger’s game and body.

Now we know — it’s not good.

He’ll still play in “The Match” in two Saturdays with Rory and go 12 holes in a cart against Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth.

Then there’s the PNC with son Charlie.

Tiger’s plan is to saddle Charlie up and ride him like a racehorse.

Pretty good plan there.