Tiger Watch

Seeing Tiger Woods' car crash scars for first time will make you appreciate his legendary grit even more

By Alex Myers

July 23, 2024

Raj Mehta

Tiger Woods missed the cut at the Open Championship on Friday to conclude another disappointing season. On Monday, however, he revealed something that made golf fans appreciate the fact he’s still playing even more.

Woods has been walking around Oakland Hills Country Club following his son, Charlie, as he competes in his first U.S. Junior Amateur. But while we’ve seen him following the 15-year-old before, this is the first time the 15-time major champ has ditched his leg sleeve since getting back on his feet from a car crash in February of 2021.

On that fateful day, Woods’ right leg was shattered by an open fracture. To the point that he’s said doctors almost had to amputate.

"There was a point in time I won't say it was 50/50 but it was [expletive] near there that I was going to walk out of that hospital with one leg," Woods said in an interview with Golf Digest that November. "Once I [kept it], I wanted to test and see if I still had my hands."

So, yeah, it’s pretty amazing that Tiger has even teed it up at a handful of events the past few years. And the scars from his various surgeries captured by photos on Monday will make that even more apparent. See for yourself.

Woods would be the last person to make excuses for his poor play following rounds of 79 and 77 at Royal Troon, but we’ll go ahead and make one for him after seeing that. The guy is nowhere near 100 percent, and sadly, he’ll never be.

So while most people are looking at his season from the standpoint of him only making one cut at a major, we’re leaning more toward it being amazing that he even made that cut at Augusta in April, which also happened to break the record for consecutive Masters cuts made. That’s true grit right there.

Following the Open, the 48-year-old Woods said he won’t play again until December at his Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas and then with Charlie at the PNC Championship. No matter how he plays, golf fans should be happy—and grateful—he’s playing at all.