EVERY YEAR it’s the same, we have this vision of Golf Masters managers arming themselves with medical encyclopedias trying to figure out how long it takes to recover from, say, a tweaked sternoclavicular joint.
As Steve Stricker’s 61 managers will now tell you, the sternoclavicular joint allows movement of the clavicle, predominantly in the anteroposterior and vertical planes. Tweak it and you miss week three’s New Orleans Classic and, quite possibly, the Players Championship in week five, the first bonus tournament of the year.
Considering he cost his managers €6.5 million, that’s an expensive tweak.
What about injured toes? “I was hoping to play Quail Hollow but have broken my toe, running around with my kids, so have had to withdraw,” wrote Retief Goosen on his website when he, well, broke the news to his 196 managers.
“Hopefully it will be on the mend in time for the Players,” he added, which was way too fuzzy a prognosis for their transfer-making needs.
Also out of Quail Hollow are Briny Baird (neck injury) and Michael Sim (damaged tendon in his right shoulder), although the latter’s mishap is only bad news for eight managers, as opposed to Baird’s 203.
Anthony Kim, meanwhile, has to have surgery at some point this year to reattach the ligament between his index finger and left thumb. As our third highest earning player so far, after Phil Mickelson and YE Yang, Kim’s 438 managers might be inclined to tell him to leave well enough alone, figuring the unattached ligament isn’t doing any harm at all.
Kim, though, wants to be fit for the Ryder Cup in September. “It was probably one of the greatest weeks I’ve had playing golf,” he said of his appearance in the 2008 event, “so I want to be healthy for that. I just want to time it right.” Ominous news for his bosses.
Then there’s Ian Poulter who put his 204 employers through the hoops by injuring his knee playing basketball, forcing him to withdraw from New Orleans. He expects to be back for the Players, but his last Twitter entry says: “Friends, I’m looking in to possibly buying a road bike, what do you think, I’m a complete beginner.” We reckon he’ll get 204 replies along the lines of: :-(
