by Jana » Thu Dec 17, 2009 7:52 am
Excerpt from Article in the LA Times on Tiger and his bulkier physique. Cheating will never kill his career, but this would, if true:
"The golf great's credibility, already eroded by marital infidelity, could evaporate entirely if there's fire to go along with the smoke generated by his reported link to a doctor who promotes HGH.
By Bill Plaschke
December 16, 2009
Two years ago, after following Tiger Woods down the fairway for a couple of days at the U.S Open at Oakmont, I confided to friends an observation that seemed too absurd for public consumption.
From the back, the dude looked like Barry Bonds.
His neck was oddly wide. His shoulders were absurdly broad. His biceps were busting out of a tight shirt.
For the first time, he wasn't just better than everyone else, he was also bigger. He looked not like a technician lining up a tee shot, but a slugger getting loose for batting practice.
He looked weird. He looked stuffed. He looked dirty.
I confided it, but never wrote it, because who would believe it?
Tiger Woods in the same sentence as the most infamous (alleged) steroid user? He was too smart, too scripted, too careful.
Thought so, anyway.
Now I wonder.
The New York Times report this week that links Woods with a doctor who promotes human growth hormone would have been silly two months ago but makes scary sense today.
If a guy is a chronic cheater off the course, what kind of leap is required to believe he could be the same sort of cheater on the course?
That distance is now a mere hop and skip after the newspaper reported that Dr. Anthony Galea is under a joint U.S.-Canadian investigation for providing athletes with performance-enhancing drugs.
One of the athletes who has rehabilitated under Galea's care is Woods, who allegedly was visited at least four times by the doctor in Woods' Orlando, Fla., home.
During those times, Woods' agent claimed the golfer received nothing more than Galea's groundbreaking platelet-rich plasma therapy for his reconstructed knee.
"The treatment Tiger received is a widely accepted therapy, and to suggest some connection with illegality is recklessly irresponsible," Mark Steinberg wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press.
You know what's really recklessly irresponsible? Dealing with a doctor who has a history of using and prescribing the banned HGH substance, that's what.
All the healers in the world, the best money can buy, and Woods chooses an eccentric 50-year-old HGH peddler who not only prescribes it to older patients, but says he injects himself five days a week to keep up with a wife who, he says, is 22 years younger?
"If the body is healthy, then your mind and intellect are free to study, to feed your spirit," Galea told the New York Times in an interview.
Woods has been feeding his spirit quite enough, thank you."