Mike Celizic

Tiger Woods had long since joined the immortals of his or any other game. But now he’s separated himself from all but a handful of them, joining a fraternity so small, it could meet in the living room of a mobile home.

Jack Nicklaus wouldn’t be at that meeting. Neither would Arnold Palmer or Lee Trevino or Gary Player or Tom Watson. Ben Hogan would be there along with Ken Venturi and the legendary Harry Vardon. Sandy Koufax would be there from baseball and maybe Jack Youngblood from football. Bob Braun would represent hockey and Shun Fujimoto and Kerri Strug from gymnastics. Willis Reed could have a seat outside, on the porch, but he couldn’t get in. He didn’t play a whole game on his bum leg. Kirk Gibson wouldn’t be allowed in the driveway. And that would be about it.

These are all people who played extensively in incredible pain, athletes who played with body parts broken or barely healed or half-destroyed or just plain sick near to death. And not only played, but played the whole game or tournament and triumphed through pain that few people could endure.

Woods did what they did. He was like Fujimoto, the Japanese gymnast who won an Olympic gold medal in 1972, landing a dismount from an alarming altitude on the horizontal bar on a broken leg. He was like Strug, landing the gold-medal winning vault in the team event at the Atlanta games on a badly sprained ankle. He was like Braun, the hockey player, who played the entire game and scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal for Toronto against Detroit in 1964 on a badly broken ankle.

Only Koufax did him one better, pitching the entire 1965 season, winning the Cy Young and the World Series, throwing more than 300 innings with an elbow that was so damaged by arthritis he could barely bend it.

More on Hogan and Vardon and Venturi, the other golfers in that group, later, but for now it’s enough to say they aren’t in Tiger’s league. Not anymore. Not after Torrey Pines.

Tiger’s Open victory now truly is what I said it would be a week before he teed it up — one of the greatest accomplishments in any sport. Ever.

We already knew what he accomplished over the five days it took to win the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines was his finest hour. He told us that much himself after he had limped and grimaced his way through 72 holes of regulation and another 19 of overtime against Rocco Mediate. But at the time, we thought all he was battling was the residual effects of the arthroscopic surgery he underwent after the Masters.

Now we know better. Now we know that he not only had a torn ACL, an injury he’s been playing with for almost a year, but two stress fractures in his left shinbone. Don’t bother calling a doctor to find out whether that was a smart thing to do. He said himself at the time that he wasn’t good at taking advice, which leaves no question that he was told, “Don’t do it.”

And he did it anyway, ignoring what had to be the occasional blinding bolts of pain that accompanied some of his more violent swings, but also the constant ache of a bone and a joint that didn’t want any part of what he was putting them through.

Video   Shot for shot: The back nine and sudden death June 16: Watch Tiger and Rocco do battle on the back nine, plus an extra sudden-death playoff hole, for the U.S. Open title. NBC Sports

People like to say that Hogan’s playoff win in the 1950 Open after he was nearly killed in an auto accident marks the high point of courage in golf. Some will say that Venturi’s zombie-like performance while suffering from heatstroke in the 1964 Open should also be considered as a true act of sporting heroism. And students of history will say that Vardon’s victory in the 1903 British Open while vomiting blood and running a raging fever from tuberculosis tops them all.

Hogan and Venturi will have to step aside now, and Vardon can keep his place in the dim recesses of a history no one alive today can remember seeing firsthand, and I’m not qualified to assess. Still, what Tiger Woods did stands alone.

The reasons are simple enough. Hogan was in his wreck 16 months before the Open, and, although his legs were severely weakened from his recovery, he had been playing competitive golf at the highest level when he got to the Open in 1950. Yes, it was painful every step of the way, but he wasn’t in danger of hurting himself, and he’d had plenty of experience dealing with it.

As for Venturi, that was a one-day thing. He became severely dehydrated in brutal heat at Congressional during the morning round of what used to be a 36-hole final on Sunday. During the afternoon, he admits barely being aware of playing, drinking tea supplied by doctors and hitting whatever club his caddy handed him in whichever direction he was told to aim. For Venturi, playing the final 18 wasn’t a decision, but hardly a conscious one. He barely knew where he was or what he was doing; he was running on instinct.

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