Weeks Later, It's Still an Open Discussion

Tiger isn't here. Yet he's on every tongue. Who else could promote his own event from a thousand miles away, simply on the strength of memories he created more than two weeks ago?

For the next four days as more than 120,000 people wander the spectacular grounds of Congressional Country Club, conversation will gradually focus, by Sunday night, on a new winner of the "AT&T National Hosted by Tiger Woods." But, until that final shot, you can be sure that almost as much talk will center on the absent host and what he accomplished on a broken leg two weeks ago in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

And what, exactly, did Woods achieve? Perhaps there has never been a major event in American sports that required a more complete reevaluation in hindsight. We thought we knew what we had seen. And we'd seldom seen anything better, in any sport. Then, two days later, we discovered that we didn't have a clue what we had actually watched.

We hadn't watched a rusty golfer win his national championship on a sore knee just eight weeks after surgery. We watched a true Tiger, in what will almost certainly be the defining moment of his career, win the Open with two fresh stress fractures in his leg and a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, enduring pain that barely let him walk. The surgery that we believed was his big problem? Throw that in as an afterthought.

"I watched him play. I'm thinking, 'What's he doing?' It looked risky to me. He's wincing. But he's getting through," said veteran Paul Goydos, who played the runner-up Rocco Mediate role to Sergio García at the Players Championship in May. "Then you hear that he's actually got a torn ACL and a broken leg and you're thinking, 'That's insane. He walked 40 miles.'

"Everything Tiger does is just another thing in the pyramid of his success. Okay, he [won the Open] on a broken leg? No kidding. Next?" Goydos continued, laughing. "He'd win the British Open [in two weeks] if he was playing right now. On one leg and in a sling and hopping -- he'd probably be in the top 10."

Perhaps the man most often assumed to be sad at the loss of Woods for the rest of this season is PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem. But even he senses that Woods elevated his whole sport, brought it some of the visceral appeal of more violent games and may have convinced a generation of general sports fans to perceive golf as closer to the mainstream of football, baseball and basketball.

"It was just one of the more amazing, if not the most amazing week of golf that I've ever seen," Finchem said. "It captivated so many people. You look at the [TV] ratings. It sort of accelerated as the week went on. Each day was bigger and better, right up to the last putt on the 91st hole. . . . Families gathered around TVs. Kids who don't normally follow the game were glued to hours of golf coverage. Just the whole thing was magic."

The public fears that Woods will have a difficult recovery after his fourth surgery on his left knee and that his joint problem will erode his dominance. Other players fear just the opposite. After all, Tiger says his knee has hurt, to varying degrees, for 10 years and that, with proper rehabilitation, it will be completely healed.

"Does this mean he'll be coming back at 100 percent after playing his whole career out here at 80 percent?" Goydos said.

Perhaps Stuart Appleby, Woods's longtime friend, has the balance of concern meted out appropriately. "Tiger's got a lot of stuff going on in that [knee] for a pretty young healthy guy," Appleby said. "He puts a lot of snapping and force through that knee.

"So I think his jogging days will be done -- pounding away on whatever cartilage is left. But I don't think it will be career-threatening. And I don't think he will change his swing. He creates so much power by loading and really driving [down] through the ground. . . . He'll lose length if he does [change], he really will."