RIP - Tiger Woods'

[Goober McTuber]

season. Withdrew from the Players after a 42 on the front 9. Apparently a bunch of niggling injuries.

[indyfrisco]

What a glorious fall.

Get fucked, Tigger.

[Screw_Michigan]

I figured you'd be a Tiger fan, I_F. You know, unbridled arrogance and all.

Fuck Tiger. I'd piss on his grave.

[Goober McTuber]

I guess Tiger’s new swing coach took exception to Bubba Watson’s assessment that Tiger was headed in the wrong direction:

http://blogs.golf.com/presstent/2011/05 ... cism-.html

[MuchoBulls]

He didn't look like he had any issue in the final round at Augusta.

I'm not buying that he is in that much pain.

[Felix]

Foley is an asshole of the highest caliber....no doubt he fits in well with the rest of el tigre's entourage

[indyfrisco]

I figured you'd be a Tiger fan, I_F. You know, unbridled arrogance and all.

Why would you think that? Tigger's a fraud. I'm not. I'm out coaching my kid's t-ball. He isn't. I don't pretend to be a family man like him. I am one. He's as big a piece of shit as John Daly if not moreso for the simple fact Daly embraced his shitty self whereas Tigger hid it.

[Felix]

interesting opinion piece by Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel today

Is anybody else wondering why Tiger Woods is falling apart right before our very eyes?

Why the aches and pains and strained tendons and ruptured ligaments are starting to happen more and more often?

Why his body simply doesn't recover as quickly as it once could and why his ball doesn't travel as far as it once did?

Anybody else wondering if Tiger's prolonged winless streak is due more to the fact that his old swing coach has been fired or the fact that his old blood doctor has been indicted?

As Tiger hobbled around The Players Championship Thursday and withdrew after recording a horrific 6-over 42 after only nine holes, it was hard not to wonder if his golfing free fall has more to do with his much-publicized split from wife Elin or his less-publicized disassociation with Dr. Anthony Galea.

You remember Dr. Feelgood, right? He's the Canadian physician who was arrested and indicted for allegedly smuggling and unlawfully distributing HGH into the United States a couple of years ago. Galea is suspected of providing performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to many elite-level athletes.

Woods was treated by Galea here in Orlando in 2009 despite the fact that Galea was reportedly not licensed to practice medicine in the United States. Woods says he used Galea not for HGH but for a technique known as "blood spinning" to help expedite Woods' recovery from knee surgery. Why Woods would choose a well-known HGH doctor from Canada to do this "blood-spinning" when many licensed American doctors also perform the technique has raised a mountain of suspicion.

Even though Woods has denied ever taking PEDs, many professional golfers are skeptical. Sports Illustrated polled 71 PGA Tour players last year and nearly a quarter of them said they believed Woods was dirty.

Is it fair to accuse Woods of once being a juicer? No it's not. But in this day and age when nearly every major sport has been touched by a drug scandal, it's certainly fair to wonder. Why shouldn't we? Especially with the way Tiger's body -- once the most invincible and physically fit in all of golf -- is breaking down like an '84 Chevette.

You don't have to be a biochemist to know that one of the major benefits of HGH is that it helps the body quickly recover from the stress placed upon it by the repetitive nature of massive, torque-producing athletic maneuvers. That's why baseball pitchers take it and why golfers would benefit from it, too. Golf swings and baseball windups, when done repetitively, place an enormous amount of strain on all of those moving body parts.

A few years ago, before the PGA Tour finally started drug-testing its athletes, Commissioner Tim Finchem had his head in the sand trap when he essentially scoffed at the possibility that any of his golfers could be on PEDs. Finchem truly believed that even though many of the top athletes in nearly every other sport were dirty that his sport was somehow completely clean. How laughable is that?

HGH is purported to be an anti-aging miracle cure that some doctors claim reverse the effects of growing old. We will probably never know for sure if Tiger ever put it into his body, but we do know this: He is aging quickly before our very eyes.

He was once one of the two or three longest hitters on the tour, but now he's not even close (he's 69th in driving distance in the five events he's played in this year). He used to intimidate playing partners by stepping to the tee and mashing his tee shot 40 yards past theirs. These days, he intimidates no one, not even the Golf Channel commentators who use to tiptoe around ever saying anything remotely critical about him.

Earlier this week, this is what Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee had to say about him: "It's really sad to watch what's going on with Tiger Woods on the range. This phenomenal athlete with perhaps the best swing of all time is now an old man out there trying to rehearse moves that don't come naturally to him."

With his fading golf game, his prolonged losing streak, his deteriorating body and his uncomfortable ties to the Canadian drug doctor, it makes you wonder.

Did it really always come naturally to Tiger?

performance enhancing drugs never entered into my realm of thinking, but Bianchi's article really made me stop and give it serious consideration...the timing fits perfectly

[indyfrisco]

Here's a guy who plays the US Open with a broken fucking leg and has to go to an 18 hole playoff and wins the fucking thing. Now the pussy up and quits a tournament because of a sore knee and achillies AFTER he cards a 42 on the front? What a bitch. Take your medicine and miss the cut like a man. I'm thinking if he was hurting so bad and still carded a -2 on the front, he'd stick around.

I gotta give props to Jsc. El Gato is done.

[Screw_Michigan]

Yep, that's one of the reasons why I love to see Tiger fail. He's such a fucking bitch.

[BSmack]

Performance enhancing drugs never entered into my realm of thinking, but Bianchi's article really made me stop and give it serious consideration...the timing fits perfectly

Yea, because there is no other way for athletes to get PEDs now that Dr. Galea has been indicted. They might just as well stop testing for them, Dr. Galea has been put on ice. Problem solved.

Or maybe Tiger is just breaking down the way many athletes whose games rely on raw physical power do in their late 30s. You know, as opposed to Baroid continuing to launch 40 bombs a year into his early 40s. Tiger is going to have to find a way to swing a golf club so that it doesn't put as much stress on his body. It means he needs to break down and reassemble his swing AGAIN, this time in his late 30s as precious time is running out in his quest for 5 more majors. That's all there is to it.

[Felix]

Or maybe Tiger is just breaking down the way many athletes whose games rely on raw physical power do in their late 30s. You know, as opposed to Baroid continuing to launch 40 bombs a year into his early 40s. Tiger is going to have to find a way to swing a golf club so that it doesn't put as much stress on his body. It means he needs to break down and reassemble his swing AGAIN, this time in his late 30s as precious time is running out in his quest for 5 more majors. That's all there is to it.

I've seen golfers decline over the years, but I've never seen a fall off the precipice to match what I'm seeing with el tigre...sure athletes bodies break down, but it's usually an extended time frame, his body seems to have abandoned him in about 2 years.....

[Dinsdale]

I've seen golfers decline over the years, but I've never seen a fall off the precipice to match what I'm seeing with el tigre...sure athletes bodies break down, but it's usually an extended time frame, his body seems to have abandoned him in about 2 years.....

I dunno... Steve Elkington went down pretty quick. Sir Nick's demise was pretty abrupt. Seve dropped off the face of the earth pretty quickly.

If someone provided some compelling evidence that Woods juiced, I wouldn't be surprised. Same goes for a few others (sup Camillo).

But if you look at the shot where Woods went down -- how many people here (even those who haven't had 4 knee surgeries) wouldn't have come up lame after that nasty foot-slip hitting off the steep below-the-ball sidehill lie on the pinestraw?

That was brutal, and he pretty much went down like a sack of potatoes, before he sprang back up.

[BSmack]

Or maybe Tiger is just breaking down the way many athletes whose games rely on raw physical power do in their late 30s. You know, as opposed to Baroid continuing to launch 40 bombs a year into his early 40s. Tiger is going to have to find a way to swing a golf club so that it doesn't put as much stress on his body. It means he needs to break down and reassemble his swing AGAIN, this time in his late 30s as precious time is running out in his quest for 5 more majors. That's all there is to it.

I've seen golfers decline over the years, but I've never seen a fall off the precipice to match what I'm seeing with el tigre...sure athletes bodies break down, but it's usually an extended time frame, his body seems to have abandoned him in about 2 years.....

The whole point of Bianchi's article is that his decline mirrors the time that his alleged access to HGH was cut off due the the indictment of Galea.

That would be a very valid argument were Galea the only possible source of HGH. But we can say with absolute certainly Galea is not the only possible source of HGH. Tiger Woods has the financial reach to obtain HGH from just about any source in the world. Were he cut off from one source, he should have been able to find a new source by now. Ergo, his body would not be breaking down were it being held together by PEDs because Tiger (who has never been implicated in any PED use) would still be taking his PEDs undetected.

As for your claim that Tiger's physical decline has been too rapid, he's had knee issues since he was a teenager. He's been under the knife a bunch of times. The long and the short is that he needs to figure out a way to swing a golf club that his body can live with. If he does, he'll be back. If not, he'll have to live with 14 majors and about a half a billion dollars as a consolation prize.

[Felix]

As for your claim that Tiger's physical decline has been too rapid, he's had knee issues since he was a teenager. He's been under the knife a bunch of times. The long and the short is that he needs to figure out a way to swing a golf club that his body can live with. If he does, he'll be back. If not, he'll have to live with 14 majors and about a half a billion dollars as a consolation prize.

look all I said is that I've not seen many athletes with his kind of physical gifts fall as quickly as he has, especially given the fact that he's relatively young in golf years.....I recognize that he's had recurring knee troubles, but many of his problems don't seem to be related to his knees (chipping and putting are both way off) I don't know if he was taking HGH....it's just that Bianchi's article gave me pause to think

[MuchoBulls]

I am not a fan of Bianchi and I am not surprised he went the way he did with his column.

Brandall Chamblee was on Rome on Friday and he brought up a point that I hadn't heard before. He mentioned that Tiger's workout to build up his body was the worst thing that he could ever do. Whether or not HGH or blood spinning factors into this was not the issue because Chamblee said Tiger had everything he needed when he was leaner.

[Mikey]

Juicing? You make the call...


Tiger at Stanford




Tiger now