Rabalais: Does injury hurt Tiger’s future?

• By SCOTT RABALAIS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Apr 17, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:22 a.m.

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Tiger Woods is to golf what Joe Alleva is to the LSU athletic department. He’s been widely anointed as the best ever to pick up a golf club, the greatest golfer of all time designee.

With 13 majors at age 32, he’s expected to surpass Jack Nicklaus’ career total of 18. With 64 PGA Tour victories, he’s expected to slam Sam Snead’s record of 82 career victories and point toward 100 or more.

He will probably do both of these things one day. Probably. But it’s worth noting that nothing is a guarantee in sports before it happens.

Tuesday, Woods went to Park City, Utah, to undergo arthroscopic surgery on his left knee. Apparently, Woods gritted through the pain all this season but once The Masters was over he decided he’d had enough.

Woods will reportedly be out 4-6 weeks. That means he will likely miss the defense of his title at the Wachovia Championship two weeks from now in Charlotte, N.C., and could well miss The Players Championship the following week in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

He should be back for the U.S. Open in a little less than two months. The Open will be held this year for the first time at Torrey Pines, which has been to Tiger Woods what the tiger habitat at LSU is to Mike VI. Woods has won on the San Diego public links six times, though never with knee-high U.S. Open rough choking the fairways.

Even if Woods’ knee is in traction he’ll still probably be the favorite to win the U.S. Open, and maybe he should. Maybe he will continue to win a tiger’s share of the tournaments for years to come. Winning like no one before him, or after.

Or Woods’ now troublesome left knee could become his Achilles’ heel.

This is the third time Woods’ knee has required surgery. In 1994 it was to remove a benign tumor. In 2002 he also had the joint scoped. Woods returned in early 2003 and won three of his first four starts.

But Tiger was 27 then. The years pass by, and it doesn’t become any easier to rehab when you’re older than when you were younger.

This isn’t to wish Woods ill. Far from it. His career has been utterly remarkable in an era when the talent in golf is deeper than it has ever been.

But with recurring injuries, there’s no guarantee that the damaged body part will ever be as good as it was before.

Ben Hogan was proof of that. At 36, he suffered a near fatal car crash in Texas in 1949. Though he came back to win 13 more tournaments — including three of four majors in 1953 (a feat Woods matched in 2000) — Hogan never again played more than seven tournaments a year. His aching legs couldn’t take it.