US Open / Bill Elliott / 03 June 2008 /

Bill Elliott spoke with Tiger Woods this week. The great man (Tiger not Bill, though we are big fans of Bill) talked at length about his knee. Read what he had to say here

No-one ever has won more by playing less. Whatever else Tiger Woods is, he is not now, and rarely has been, over-golfed. Especially not now.

When the champ tees it up at Torrey Pines in the United States Open next week he will be playing for the first time since finishing second in the Masters. Forty-eight hours after that disappointment - "I just had a poor putting week" - Woods has had surgery on his troublesome left knee and spent most of the weeks between then and now playing catch with his daughter. As of this week he has yet to play 18 holes.

If ever there was a time to oppose the man who will be overwhelming favourite to lift the year's second major in California this would seem to be it. Except that Woods is not prone to suffering the slings and arrows associated with normal logic. He spaces his playing schedule out anyway and hadn't played competitively for months when he came out on to the US Tour this season, at which point he reeled off three consecutive victories.

When we spoke this week he was his usual confident self. With Tiger you can never be sure whether this confidence is genuine or not because the one thing he will not do is to give his main rivals any idea that everything in his life is ever less than pretty well perfect. Even he, however, had to admit that throwing a ball to a little girl in your backyard is no way to prepare for the US Open. Even if your backyard is the size of Arkansas.

"It's been a little frustrating because I have missed the competitive atmosphere and the guys generally at a tournament. But pain is no longer an issue with my knee. It was early on but not now. Now, it's about getting endurance back into the leg, getting it used to twisting and torquing and hitting ball after ball after ball, just countless balls," he said.

"Most of the guys out there are a little bit nicked up, a little bit injured. But generally it isn't their left knee it's usually their left hip, right hip, lower back, neck, shoulder, wrist, elbows, those are very common injuries. And some guys get even a little more severe than that. But for me it's been my left knee.

"That's been kind of where the force of my golf swing has taken basically the brunt of it. And it's one of the reasons why I made the changes I have been working on over the years to try a get rid of some of that, alleviate the strain of that. So that I can play for a longer duration. And it's been working, but still I've done it for so long people don't realize I've been playing golf for oh, geez, basically 30 years now."

He says also that he is not concerned if his leg is not 100 per cent come next Thursday in San Diego, says he has played many times when he has had some sort of problem and adds tellingly "I've played in pain and I've won in pain as well" and that he could be playing next week even if wasn't a major.

Of course we have to believe him. Don't we? And yet there is still a nagging doubt about his return this time. American journalist pals of mine tell me he had a discernible limp when he was seen at last week's event and this has to be a worry for the Woods camp at this stage. He is, after all, a player who swings the club at frightening speeds to place enormous stress on that left leg.

The other fact is that although he may be pain-free, the sensible side of his brain will still be urging him not to give it full throttle for a while. If anyone can overcome this mind-over-matter problem then it is this man but he would not be the first to be defeated by it. Ask Ernie Els who is still occasionally finding it difficult to make a full weight change three years after he ripped his cruciate ligament tootling about on a yacht in the Med.

No, knees are weird things, the most complicated joints in the body. It really could be that, for a while at least, Tiger's knee could be this supreme player's Achilles Heel. If you see what I mean...

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