Tiger and His New Knee
At the risk of piling on to an overhyped subject, I want to give my opinion about the new Tiger’s Paw.
Tiger said at his tournament interview this week that his not so newly operated knee feels “unbelievable” and that it hasn’t felt this stable in years.
This interview clip on The Golf Channel was followed by a discussion of how this new knee might affect Tiger’s golf swing. There was some conjecture by Frank Nobilo that Tig would need to change his swing, with a “soft” left knee at impact – in other words, a bit of a lower body slide that Tiger has never done before. That left some question as to how Tiger might adjust on his return.
Are the Tour players holding some hope that Tiger 2.0 might not be as good as Tiger 1.2 (or whichever swing iteration you want to put on him)?
Don’t hold your breath, mis amigos.
Look, there are two ways of looking at this:
1. Tiger has played with a bad knee for nearly his entire professional career. Now he has a good, stable knee to really drive into. He is excited because, now that he is swinging short irons and wedges, he sees just how much better he is going to be with a solid, painless lead leg. Bad news for numbers 2 through infinity on the Tour.
2. Tiger will take some time to adjust to this new knee. He’ll have to change his old swing a bit to its third professional variation. And that swing will now take place on a knee that feels great and stable – a new sensation for Tiger, but not a bad one – at all. Remember, he changed his swing twice on a bad knee and just kept racking up wins. Again, bad news for everyone not named Eldrick.
I can’t picture too many ways that a stable lead leg, which he now has, hurts Tiger. As I learned at our TPI seminar last weekend, the knee is one of the components of the body in an athletic maneuver that needs stability. Tiger hasn’t had that, yet he is the greatest player of his, and maybe all, time.
Now it is stable. And that lets the mobile segments above and below fire at will, which they couldn’t do as well before. (Hip and ankle for those wondering).
And that doesn’t even take into account his mental state, with confidence in a new, pain-free, stable knee.
I also would like to add that as a left knee ACL tear survivor – I lived without my left ACL from high school to about the age of 36 – that confidence in a stable, pain-free left knee is very, very important in a golf swing. As an aside, I like to think that without that injury, my chances of making the Tour would have been vastly improved. (I didn’t say it was valid, just that I like to think it)
Watch out world – a new and improved Tiger is out there!
Be afraid PGA Tour Member, be very afraid…