Comparing Knee Inuries

[Kicker774 0]

So all the talk over the weekend was what a god Tiger was playing on an injured knee.

On another forum I mentioned that his injury and surgery wasn't jack compared to Yzermans knee, and for this I was promptly shouted down and flamed. (Although this is primarily because hockey is such a minority sport on this board that no one cares about it and because it's a Columbus based board which means many crazed OSU fans for a hatred of anything Michigan or Detroit)

Anyways I wanted to try and compare the facts here.

Steve had worked his knee to the bone. Literally, he had no cartilage left in his knee. But he wasn't just standing around on his knee or walking. He was skating and skating hard with bones grinding against other bones. Twisting the knee this way and that caused excruciating pain.

His Osteotomy surgery in layman's terms basically means we need to hack off a part of your leg bone in order to force the knee back into correct alignment. This is a surgery designed for patients to simply walk again and delay an entire reconstructive knee surgery. Not designed to take the full rigors of playing hockey.

Now here is my understanding on Tigers knee injury:

Tiger Woods went through arthroscopic surgery. This is a minimally invasive surgery designed to simply clean up the knee. Remove some jagged cartilage, also remove some broken off pieces of cartilage. Recovery seems straight forward. Stay off it a few days then you can start walking again. Might be a little sore but nothing a few advil can't take care of.

Maybe I'm not making out the surgery to be as serious as it really is but in my eyes it just seems like nothing compared to Steve Yzermans knee injury. Not just the surgery but the abuse their knees take before and after the surgeries. I realize there may be a little tourqing or twisting of the knee in a golf swing but other than that your simply walking around. And it's not like your carrying any weight because you have a caddy to take care of your bag.

Am I right here? Am I missing something about Tiger or golfers in general.

The whole OSU v. Michigan thing rarely bugs me and that's a lot of what this is about on this other board.

But this bugs me because it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with respect for the sport we love so much and our heroes and idols.

I mean how can you not see that the stresses hockey puts on the body far exceed that of golf.

The stresses exerted on the knee in hockey far exceed the stress put on the knee in golf.

I am right here aren't I?

I admit Tiger is a great golfer. You can't doubt that fact. He is in great shape and I'm sure works hard to stay in shape.

But I'm sorry all in all it's just golf. This isn't Hockey, this isn't Football or Basketball. It's simply golf.

Sorry for turning this into a bit of a rant when I wnated to keep this factual but it's just really bugging me for some reason.

I'm sure we all may be a little biased torwards Yzerman but I really like to hear what some slightly more level headed people here think.

[seeinred 1,488]

I'm not saying Tiger's injury is anywhere near as bad as Stevie's because I'm pretty sure it's not. But do you have any idea how much torque Tiger puts on that knee with his 130+ MPH swing speed? I have no doubt Tiger was in excruciating pain, plus he had 2 stress fractures in his tibia.

[betterREDthandead 58]

I'm sure, also, that Yzerman was probably getting painkiller shots, cortisone shots or something like that, to numb the pain.

As mentioned above, the torque on Tiger's knee when he swings, and the stress fractures also getting torqued, probably really is painful. And because golf requires such precision, the risks to Tiger are huge. A stabbing pain at the wrong time cause an awful shot and make him double bogey a hole or something, but that's not the worst of it. If the pain causes him to try and compensate, it could really mess up his swing and it'd take years to recover from that. That's what happens to pitchers with leg injuries - they try and compensate in their delivery to avoid the pain, and it messes up their shoulder or their elbow.

[SouthernWingsFan 854]

I understand your though process Kicker, but you were pretty much destined for a flaming with the thought process because people were going to take it as YZERMAN ROX AND IS GOD!!!!!!!! and Woods being a wussy, espeically since the people you stated probably don't have as much knowledge about hockey or Steve Yzerman as you do.

While what Yzerman did overcome in 2002 was absolutely phenomenal, it should take absolutely nothing away from how Woods was able to win the US Open a few days ago. It might have been more painful for Yzerman, but you are talking about two different sports where the goals for winning/doing your best are completely different and require different things.

Playing with stress factures and on an ACL that is already torn, I don't care who you are, has got to be difficult. If it wasn't so painful for Woods to play this tournament, he wouldn't be having surgery ASAP and would be continuting to play tourneys with plenty of events left on the PGA Tour this season.

[CrossCheck24 2]

We need a doctor in here to give an educated response to which is worse. I can't see either of them being much fun to go through.

[eva unit zero 271]

Yzerman had arthroscopic surgery on his knee going into the 2002 Olympics, for those of you who have forgotten. Yzerman was back playing in a week. Woods had the same operation within the past year, and did not play for a month. Woods is now undergoing another operation which will be far less invasive than Yzerman's osteotomy. Woods expects to miss at least as much time as Yzerman missed, likely more.

Yes, Tiger Woods is a tough golfer. But his playing through his knee injury doesn't even come close to Yzerman. Anyone who suggests that it does has no understanding of the rigors of playing hockey.

[SouthernWingsFan 854]

That shouldn't matter, it is like comparing apples to oranges. Two completely different sport, two completely different objectives to win/do your best, two completely different bodies and how they might react to surgery. Yzerman was never going to be a professional golfer, and unless Woods takes up hockey lessons soon, he's not going to be a professional hockey player. You may say that Woods is a tough golfer, but all these apples/oranges comparisons I've been hearing between him and Yzerman in here that imply YZERMAN GOD, WOODS WUSSY makes it sound like Woods is just that. He isn't and comparing the two athletes and their situations is not necessary.

[Real1 2]

They both played through very bad pain, but I have to say that Tigers is worse because of the fractures in his tibia...

[Earthhuman 8]

I get why you feel worked-up about it, though. You are passionate about Stevie Y, how can you be a Wings fan and not love him?

It's like when someone tells me that Nirvana only had one good album. I wont leave them alone until they admit that Kurt Cobain was a talented guitarist. Something in my brain clicks. I have to set it right, maybe to preserve his memory, maybe to justify that he's my idol, maybe because I'm so sick of hearing it when he was such an integral part of my musical development.

Same thing with Yzerman. When you find out that someone doesn't know every little detail of his career, you have to get into a passionate rant about it. You end up talking about how Gretzky had Kurri, Messier, Coffey; how Lemeiux had Jagr, Francis, Coffey; how it wasn't until later that Yzerman got Shanahan, Fedorov, Coffey.

People have to Know what a great story and inspiration he is, am I right?

[SouthernWingsFan 854]

People have to Know what a great story and inspiration he is, am I right?

It's definitely a nice story to share with people on what Yzerman has gone through not just in the '02 playoffs and throughout his career, and I have little doubt that it was damned hard to go through.

Just like how you want people to realize that as apparently messed up Cobain was in the head, he was still a very talented artist and musician, which was definitely true as well. If he wasn't, he and his band wouldn't have had their spotlight in fame, even if it might not have been as long. Nobody can ever take that away from Kurt Cobain, and nobody can ever take away from you personally what you learned from him. I'm sure you already know this, but something good to keep in mind I think.

Anyways back to the Yzerman knee injury and Woods knee injury. As much as we idolize Yzerman in here for what he has done in the past and what he went through, why does Tiger Woods' PGA Tour victory and his knee injury have to "suffer"? The two sports are different sports, two completely different scenarios on how to win or do your best, two completely different situations with Yzerman and Woods in terms of how they won their championships and knee injuries.

What Yzerman went through does not tarnish or make any more or less of Woods' PGA Championship trophy or knee injury, and vice versa. Yzerman was never going to play in the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods never going to play professional hockey. Two different sports/situations. Both are great athletes and two of the best to play their games and the accomplishments and/or injuries of both athletes does not make one athlete better or worse than the other.