Woods Discusses Surgery, Recovery

Tiger Woods offered his first post-surgery comments on Monday in a teleconference with golf media. And what did he reveal in that phone call? Some interesting stuff:

• Woods said his left knee has been sore for "10 or 12 years."
• The soreness dates to surgery he had while in college to remove a benign cyst from the left knee.
• That surgery in 1994 weakened the anterior cruciate ligament, and doctors had long expected the ligament to rupture. It finally did last year shortly after the British Open.

Woods said that surgeons took a tendon from his right hamstring and used it to rebuild the left ACL. Now, Tiger says he expects his problems to finally be in the past:

"It will be nice to finally have a healthy leg. The doctors have assured me that my long-term health will be a hell of a lot better than it’s been over the last decade. I’m really looking forward to that."

Woods has the knee in a brace now, and will use crutches for at least three weeks. After that he'll begin gradually putting weight on the knee and flexing it, the Associated Press report relates. How long will the full rehab take? Said Tiger:

"As far as longterm, I really don’t know. We have to see how this thing heals. Everyone heals at a different rate. Some people are back to playing sports in six months, some are nine, some are 12. So to be honest with you, no one really knows until we start the rehab process."

Read the full report.