Smart move: Tiger Woods says he won’t golf until healed

Tiger Woods said Tuesday that there’s “no timetable” for returning to competitive golf while he recovers from injuries to his knee and Achilles tendon. Woods spoke in Pennsylvania at the Aronimink Golf Club for the AT&T National, which he’s also sitting out.

For Woods, who has dominated at 73 PGA Tour events but last won one in September 2009, the decision was likely a wrenching one. “That’s hard for me. I’ve always been very goal-oriented about when I’m going to play,” he said Tuesday.

But it was the right decision to make, research shows.

Athletes often downplay or ignore sports injuries and pain, which makes the problem worse. But golf has its own particular risks for the injured athlete. For a 1998 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers videotaped golfers’ knees from three dimensions during the swing, and found that people suffering from a knee injury should not get back on the golf course too quickly.

While golf may not have caused the injury, it can definitely make an existing injury worse, the researchers found. That’s because the force on a golfer’s knees during downswing are equivalent to those on a runner who suddenly turns 90 degrees left or right.

Woods doesn’t seem to have ruled out playing in the Open Championship in England in two weeks, but it’s probably best to let that knee and Achilles tendon fully heal before putting them to work again.

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