Tiger Woods has won the Masters Golf Tournament. The response of my 13-year son to this was…What? He did? Isn’t he old?
It is not just that Tiger Woods is 43, which is older for sports athletes (even golfers). Clearly has a lot of talent and is a great golfer. However, he has had many years of severe back problems. Those back problems were overcome with sports medicine. Sports medicine is overcoming problems that would have ended sports careers in previous decades.
In 2017, Tiger was 42-year-old and had lower right back fusion surgery. He says on his website “I’m optimistic this will relieve my back spasms and pain. When healed, I look forward to getting back to a normal life, playing with my kids, competing in professional golf and living without the pain I have been battling for so long.”
In 2014 and 2015, he had microdiscectomy surgeries.
In 2013, Tiger feel to his knees at a golf tournament with back pain.
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Crouching Tiger, hidden injuries. Tiger suffers like many if not most pro golfers. Endless repetition of really bad biomechanics. Huge amount of compressive force, that is, imho, quite unnecessary. Bobby Jones’ swing was altogether different, more fluid, much less compressive. He did pretty well, I think. Homemade balls and hickory shafts (that are multi-plane torsional) that he could regularly drive 250-270 yards and 300 on occasion. Jones was never injured.
Golf : a sport ???? lol
I suspect it is PTSD for some people when they perform abysmally and expected to do very well and worked very hard. But science may actually be getting somewhere on that: https://www.evergreendrugrehab.com/blog/recent-research-says-ketamine-use-ptsd/
Maybe also a triumph of the human spirit? Medicine can mend the body but it cannot mend the mind.
Not sure how much sports medecine contributed, but MotoGP has had some remarkable recoveries too. Randy de Puniet and then Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi have come back from major broken bones in record time (arguably too soon). Rossi is still challenging (arguably) for the championship at 40 years old. First world championship at 18yo in ’97.
The roster has lots of riders full of prosthetics. Nicky Hayden a few years before his death had actually removed some small bones from his wrist to completely sidestep its (IIRC) arthritis.