‘Don’t count Tiger out’: Golf legends talk injuries and Tiger Woods’ mental toughness
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Dennis Walters has a message for all the doubters who say Tiger Woods is finished after suffering multiple injuries to his legs and shattering his ankle in a single-vehicle collision on Tuesday in Los Angeles.
“I’m betting on Tiger,” said Walters, who was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2019. “He’s proven he can overcome almost anything.”
More than 45 years ago, on July 21, 1974, Walters, an aspiring professional golf, was driving a cart down a gravel path. He was riding a golf cart down a steep hill when the brakes failed and he was thrown from the cart, severing his spine. He couldn’t feel his legs when he woke up in a hospital bed and knew his dream of playing on the PGA Tour was over. He has been paralyzed from the waist down since that day.
“The one thing I have learned is not to really believe anything doctors predict,” Walters said. “Medicine is not an exact science. When you combine the human will and the human spirit to overcome things, that is a very powerful force and I believe if it is possible, Tiger can do it. I’d never count him out. His mental capacity far exceeds anyone I’ve ever seen. I think that’s his strongest weapon once he gets to the point that he is able to physically rehab. If he wants to do it, I’d say Tiger Woods will be OK.”
A tow truck recovers the vehicle driven by Tiger Woods in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on February 23, 2021, after a rollover accident. (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/ AFP via Getty Images)
Walters predicted that the healing process the next few months will be difficult physically, but the bar will be set even higher mentally. When Woods spoke on TV on Sunday, he was nearing the point where he thought his surgically-repaired back might allow him to begin preparing for a return in time to play the Masters in April. He must start over again. Walters knows the feeling. Six months after his accident, Walters wasn’t making any progress so he confronted his doctor.
“He said, ‘You’re never going to walk again.’ That made me cry,” Walters recalled. “I said, ‘How about playing golf? He said, ‘Forget it.’ I said two words to him and they weren’t happy birthday!”
Essex County Golf Club in West Orange, New Jersey, where Walters once had qualified for the U.S. Amateur, was across a road from his rehab center. Walters told his doctor that he was going to return some day and hit golf balls from the parking lot on to the course.
“I came back a year and a half later and did that. My doctor said, ‘I’m never telling anyone they can’t do anything,’ ” Walters said. “It’s folly to predict what a human being can do. That’s my reasoning for saying, let things progress and see what happens. I’m betting on Tiger Woods. To what degree? I don’t know, but if Tiger Woods is given a chance, he might be able to give us more thrills like he has all these years.”
Walters has toured the country performing more than 3,000 golf exhibitions, and was Woods’ opening act when he did junior clinics early in his career. It was a letter in the mail from golf great Ben Hogan, who had suffered his own life-threatening injuries after being hit by a bus head on in 1949 and recovering to win six majors, and his support that provided a psychological lift for Walters.
Count former PGA Championship winner and NBC golf commentator Paul Azinger among those who agree that Tiger isn’t done yet.
“You can’t forget that nobody fights back harder than Tiger,” Azinger said.
“I will never stop believing that he won’t make a Ben Hogan recovery until he doesn’t,” Woods’ former instructor Hank Haney tweeted.
List
Battered but never broken: A list of Tiger Woods' injuries through the years
Woods has won a major on one leg, endured five back surgeries and come back time and time again, but this is different.
“This is his greatest challenge,” former U.S. Open champion and ESPN golf analyst Curtis Strange said. “This is something he can’t control. He’s got a beat-up body in that hospital and it’s going to take time to heal. Only then can he think about golf. But regardless, this isn’t the end of Tiger. He still has so much to offer the game.”
Comebacks have defined Woods’ career. This one may require him to re-learn how to walk and there’s no telling yet what the crash has done to his balky back. But Strange remains hopeful, too.
“Look at Alex Smith,” he said, referring to the Washington Football Team quarterback who recovered from a gruesome injury to his leg that was believed to be career-ending. “Did it seem possible he could play football last year? But he did. What seems impossible can happen.”
