Woods’ return is up in air

Tiger Woods said he has no timetable for returning to the PGA Tour and would have undergone reconstructive knee surgery even if he hadn’t won the U.S. Open.

He said he made the decision after he was unable to play the Memorial four weeks ago because of two stress fractures of his left tibia, which occurred while he was preparing to play at Torrey Pines.

“I decided then to bag it for the year,” Woods said.

Woods will be sidelined six to eight months after having surgery last Tuesday. A tendon in his right hamstring was removed and made into a new anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

He said he also had “a little bit” of cartilage damage corrected in the knee.

Woods described the surgery in a 20-minute conference call Monday that also dealt with his absence from this week’s AT&T; National at Congressional Country Club in Maryland, an event for which he is the tournament host.

Woods, who said he must wear a straight leg brace for three weeks and walks with the aid of crutches, revealed that his ACL hadn’t been right for more than 10 years, but it gave out while jogging last July.

“Running on the golf course,” he said. “It just popped right there.”

Woods will be unable to play the British Open and the PGA Championship, the first two majors he has missed as a pro. He also said he won’t show up at the Ryder Cup in September.

“I’m not part of the team. It’s about those 12 guys, it’s not about me. I’m not part of that crew,” Woods said.

The surgery was Woods’ third on his left knee in the last five years and fourth since 1994, when a benign tumor was removed.

Hank Haney, Woods’ swing coach, said the numbers are misleading.

“Everybody’s making a big deal out of four knee operations, but he hasn’t had four reconstructive knee surgeries,” Haney said. “He’s had one major knee operation and the doctors have told him he’s going to be all right.

“We’ve just tried to get him past this. He’ll wait until he’s ready to go. With an ACL, there’s no real way to rush it. You can’t make it back in less than six months.

“I don’t see this as anything but positive. He’s been playing in pain for such a long time.”

Woods’ surgeon, Thomas Rosenberg of Rosenberg Cooley Metcalf in Park City, Utah, may have used a technique called “double bundle,” or replacing both of the two parts of the ACL instead of only one, according to a report on Bloomberg.com.

The U.S. Open, where Woods had to play 91 holes in order to defeat Rocco Mediate, was Woods’ first tournament after he had surgery to clean out cartilage in his knee two days after the Masters.

He said his ACL had been troubling him for at least a decade and had it confirmed that it was deteriorating when he had surgery in 2002. In that surgery, Rosenberg drained fluid from around the ACL and also removed a benign cyst.

“Everyone was very surprised it lasted as long as it did before I ruptured it,” Woods said.

He didn’t play from mid-December until the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines in January in order to build up his hamstring, calf and gluteal muscles to protect the ACL.

“It held up great,” Woods said, “but unfortunately as I kept playing on it, it became more unstable.”

Woods said he was looking forward to playing without pain, whenever that may be, depending on how long it takes to heal. “It will be nice to finally have a healthy leg,” he said. “The doctors have assured me that my long-term health will be a lot better than it’s been over the past decade. So I’m really looking forward to that, and not having pain after I’m playing and while I’m playing.”

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thomas.bonk@latimes.com