Sports Then and Now

Tiger Woods hopes his trip to the U.S. Open will last longer than the nine holes he played at the Players Championship.

Tiger Woods is still confident of competing in next month’s US Open despite suffering another injury setback. The former world-number one pulled up after nine holes at last week’s Players Championship at Sawgrass, with a series of nagging injuries in his left leg.

Tiger’s left knee (again), Achilles and calf all tightened halfway through his opening round, so much so that he was forced to withdraw from the tournament. It was clear to anybody watching that Tiger wasn’t fully fit, his opening nine holes saw him shoot a disastrous 42 before making the decision to retire hurt. Anyone following the 2011 US Open golf betting will have been very worried by the nature of the injury.

Speaking after his enforced withdrawal from the Players Championship, Woods confirmed the injury was worryingly a flare up of an old knee problem, which had then caused tightness in his achilles and calf.

“The knee acted up, then the achilles followed and then the calf started cramping up. Everything started getting tight, so it’s just a whole chain reaction,” he said.

With the US Open less than a month away Woods has maintained he is still focusing on participating at the season’s second major, to be held at the Congressional from the 16th to the 19th of June. Woods released a statement on his personal website following his withdrawal from Sawgrass.

“Aggravating my injury is very disappointing. I’ll do whatever is necessary to play in the US Open and I’m hopeful I can be there to compete,” it read.

The course at the Congressional has happy memories for Tiger after he won the AT&T National in 2009 at the Maryland held event. The US open was Tiger’s last major win in 2008 and that year had a similar feel to it for the former dominant force in world golf. Injury then had affected Tiger’s warm-up to the Torrey Pines held US Open in 2008, a lack of practice rounds didn’t hinder him though and Woods prevailed at the first extra hole after the 18th hole play-off. Those looking at the US Open betting won’t be expecting him to pull off a miracle this time around.

While plenty will never lose any doubt that Tiger will one day return to the top of his game, some however don’t believe we’ll ever see the day when Woods is the same player as he was before his problems. Winning this year’s US Open would certainly silence those critics, but it would take a hell of an effort to do it without any preparation time.