Los Angeles (CNN) – Even after his emergency surgery, the road to recovery is long and uncertain for golf legend Tiger Woods after his California car accident.
“He’s still in that serious phase where they might have a lot of work to do in the present, the moments and the days to come,” said Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency doctor, told CNN Wednesday. Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “It is not clear to me whether or not he will return to the operating theater.”
Tiger Woods, 45, was driving Tuesday in Rancho Palos Verdes, near Los Angeles, shortly after local time, when his SUV crossed a median and weaved through two lanes of the highway before colliding with a sidewalk. came up with a tree and fell sideways into bushes Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said Tuesday.
Woods suffered leg injuries that required a rod, screws, pins and a surgical removal of the muscle covering, one that surgeons likely thought would save his leg from amputation, Faust said.
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Authorities believe the incident was “purely an accident,” but they will have to remove the event recorder from the vehicle’s black box to make that decision, Villanueva said. Seeing Woods in hospital on Tuesday, the 15-time senior champion told investigators he couldn’t remember the accident.
Just a month after the fifth back surgery of his career, the most recent accident threatens to dull his hopes of a return to golf glory.
Tiger Woods has returned from adversity before
While his fellow golf professionals have recognized that the health of Woods and his family are the most important things to consider right now, they are not ruling this out either.
He’s done it before, said Rory McIlroy.
Famous from an early age, Woods turned pro in 1996 at the age of 21, and his talent and charisma made him a global icon. He won 14 major golf tournaments between 1997 and 2008 and appeared to break the record of 18 set by Jack Nicklaus.
But a series of injuries and personal problems derailed that career path. In 2009, a car accident outside his Florida home led to tawdry revelations about his rampant infidelity and the breakdown of his marriage.
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After a hiatus from the sport, he returned to golf, but without the stifling dominance of his previous years. There was also an ever-expanding list of injuries, leading to four back surgeries, including spinal fusion surgeries, as well as the ‘dark times’ when the pain was so bad you couldn’t even get out of bed or play with your spine. children.
The surgeries and pain led to an addiction to opioid painkillers, and he was arrested in Florida in 2017 for drunk driving. He pleaded guilty to reckless driving as part of a program to avoid serving a prison sentence.
That low point made his return to the top of the sport in 2019 even more impressive. At the Masters, he leaped forward and, followed by a roaring crowd, took his first major win since the US Open in 2008, in one of the biggest comebacks in the history of the sport.
World No. 2 John Rahm said he hoped Woods could play golf and win more tournaments.
And then he could have a decent retreat, standing on the iconic Swilcan Bridge on the St Andrew golf course in Scotland, “and be able to say goodbye to the game appropriately.”
Earlier this week, Woods said he hoped to compete in this year’s Masters.
Vehicle safety features and seat belt saved lives, authorities say
Woods drove a free Genesis SUV alone and is said to have traveled at high speed before the accident, authorities said. There were no skid marks or other evidence of braking, Villanueva added.
Villanueva said the section of the road is “downhill, on a bend,” and he and Los Angeles County deputy sheriff Carlos Gonzalez said the area is known as a problem area for speeding and accidents. Since January last year there have been 13 accidents on the road.
Gonzalez, responding to the accident, found a lucid Woods still fastened to his seat belt, but trapped when the truck toppled over on the driver’s side door.
“I think the fact that he was wearing a seat belt and that the vehicle’s safety features worked, as designed by the manufacturer, probably resulted in his injury being reduced or his life saved,” Gonzalez told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
The car he was driving also had an all-new safety platform, a director of the automaker said in a statement to CNN.
The Genesis GV80’s safety features include a strong focus on “passenger compartment protection / reinforcement areas,” said Dana White, communications director for Genesis Motor North America. “This includes the use of advanced high-strength steel for increased rigidity and safety.”
The vehicle was equipped with 10 airbags as standard, including a “Genesis exclusive center airbag that folds out between the front seats,” said White.
Although the vehicle’s exterior was destroyed in the crash, the internal damage allowed Woods to survive.
“We’ve seen accidents with [daños] much less obvious that they include deaths, ”Villanueva told CNN.
CNN’s Cheri Mossburg reported from Los Angeles; wrote Madeline Holcombe, from Atlanta. CNN’s Eric Levenson, Omar Jimenez, Stella Chan, Steve Almasy, David Close, Kevin Dotson, Rob Hodgetts, Jill Martin, Dan Moriarty, Andy Rose and Paul Vercammen contributed to this report.