Knee Deep In Pain, He Plays Through

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U.S. Open - Final Round

The 108th U.S. Open played at Torrey Pines South Course in San Diego.

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Was it embarrassment? Perhaps that, too. What can it mean for the man often considered the best athlete in the world to cringe in pain after every shot, to bend almost double as he tried to walk off the second tee and to consider the possibility that he might shoot an incredibly high score. After all, in perfect health, he once shot 80 in the British Open. No, neither that nor any other normal thought crossed his mind. He knew just one thing: "I was going to finish," he said.

Then, after a pause -- because humor, usually the sardonic dark jock brand, is always close to his lips -- Woods added, "Of course, I might have been on the clock." Woods was on an entirely different kind of clock Sunday -- not one that measures slow play and inflicts penalty shots, but one in all our heads that makes us turn time backward and ask, "When have we ever seen an athlete like this? And when will we again?"

Once, a popular American debate was to ask whether golf was truly a "sport" or just a "game" because nobody tackled anybody, no bones were broken and only psyches were occasionally fractured. Woods, more than all other previous golfers combined, ended that discussion long ago. He simply obliterated the idea. If his power, precision, grace, strategic intelligence, competitive intimidation and preternatural ability to focus every Eldrick molecule on physical performance did not constitute athleticism, then what could meet the test?

However, golf has always lacked one of the defining tests of our major sports: the ability and willingness to play with pain and still excel. Sure, no one was more mentally tough that Tiger. But was he physically tough in the sense of an NFL running back?

Now we know. And, soon, another transformation in the public perception of Woods may arrive. He has always been respected, envied, admired and adulated by millions of fans. But, like Jack Nicklaus in his Fat Jack period, Woods may not quite have been loved. Or not on the same scale as the other emotions he aroused. But, just as Nicklaus worked his way into our hearts, not just our heads, as he did the handsome-guy makeover thing and showed himself to be an exemplary family man and unsurpassed role model, so Tiger -- as we see him age and face injury, as we realize that he too can limp -- might cut us even deeper.

Eventually, by the time Nicklaus was 40 and finally losing some of his gifts, America didn't watch his putts in big events so much as the sports nation prayed over them.

That might not happen here on Monday. Mediate is far too appealing a foil. But the day is coming. You could feel it on that final putt on the 72nd hole. The crowd was not holding its breath thinking simply that "Tiger will make it." They were imploring whatever forces they thought appropriate to "please let Tiger make it." That's different. And even better than the relationship we had with him before.

After this day, Woods was asked if what he was enduring now to win titles was different and harder than what he had faced before.

"Yes," he said. And no more.

And his current pain, is it residual soreness from surgery or "the way it's going to be forever?"

"It's different," he said of the current pain versus what dogged him at the Masters. And what is its future prognosis?

"I know," he said.

But he's not saying.