Did Tiger Hurt Himself?

From golf.com, an image taken after Tiger's miraculous (or maybe not) swing stop on 13 tee.

After the round, he insisted there were no problems even though the rest of mortals would have broken some bone.

Q. What happened with the swing --
TIGER WOODS: Still trying to figure that out. Birds flew right over me, stopped it somehow, I felt like I broke my back, my wrist, my neck, any legs. I don't know how those baseball players do it, that check-swing, I don't know how they do it, but I tried to check it and did somehow, and I felt like the shaft was going to snap because the head passed forward, I was trying to stop it so hard.

Q. Have you ever had that happen before where you've had a bird?
TIGER WOODS: Not on a bird, but I've stopped it like that before, yeah.

Q. How do you feel right now?
TIGER WOODS: I feel great now.

Q. No repercussions?
TIGER WOODS: No. I'm not old yet. 

 

Comments

[Hux]

Geoff,
How close was this swing to being deemed an air-shot? What would have happened had he made contact with the ball?

[NRH]

Nike is sending a prototype butterfly net overnight to Stevie.

[Spaz]

Where's Earl banging on trash cans when you need him?

[LEFTY]

How can anybody suspect Tiger's hurt when he played his best golf of the day after the incident?

[Jeremy]

That swing was scary close to being counted as a stroke. I'm willing to bet CBS fielded 500 phone calls from armchair rules officials about it.

[Scott T.]

After seeing the replay on this morning's Live from the Masters, I AM curious...

What DOES constitute an attempt at making a shot, because to my untrained eye, I'd have to say that Tiger was past the point of commitment...

It WAS an amazing recovery, but I'm curious why it was NOT counted as a stroke...and why not???

Not trying to be contrary, just curious...

[stevef22]

By definition in the Rules a stroke is the forward movement of the club made with the intention of fairly striking at and moving the ball, but if a player checks his downswing voluntarily before the clubhead reaches the ball he is deemed not to have made a stroke.

So, no intention, no stroke.

Tiger clearly was not intending to strike the ball and voluntarily checked his swing.