Reviewing Tiger Woods’ many injuries, and prospects for full recovery from back surgery

Tiger Woods, whose back surgery will force him to miss the Masters for the first time in his professional career, should return to complete health and competitive fitness if all goes well with his post-procedure rehab, according to a noted spine surgeon.

“I think there’s no reason not to expect [Woods] is going to be the same golfer he always was when he feels better,” Dr. Andrew Hecht, who emphasized he had never met nor examined Woods and offered his views about back pain in general, told SB Nation by phone on Tuesday following the procedure that neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Rich performed on Tiger on Monday in Utah.

“Elite athletes who have microdiscectomies,” said Hecht, the chief of spine surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, who put Olympic, collegiate, and professional athletes in the elite category, “over 90 percent return to the exact same elite level of sport.”

With the proper rest and rehab, which usually involves a core-strengthening program, professional football players return to the field within about 15 weeks. Professional golfers generally require less time than that to get back on the course.

“The expectation is that Woods should make a full recovery and resume his career when he’s ready,” said Hecht.

That should certainly be good news for Woods, whose list of injuries his body has absorbed support the widely held notion that the world No. 1 is an “old” 38.

Woods’ left knee has been the subject of much scrutiny, given the multiple surgeries he has had on it since he was a student at Stanford. But there’s a lot more afflicting the 14-time major champion than just his wheels, and his back -- which seized up on him last August and forced him to quit this year’s Honda Classic and pull out of a title defense at Bay Hill -- has to be the biggest concern going forward.

Had Woods suffered from a bulging disc, as originally rumored but never confirmed by Team Tiger, he likely could have recovered without going under the knife.

“Typically, a bulging disc most of the time gets better with conservative care,” Hecht said. “Back pain is a symptom, not a diagnosis [and] a very common problem that normally resolves with conservative care.”

Such treatment usually involves physical therapy, anti-inflammatory medication, stretching, and isometric exercise to strengthen the muscles around the spine.

Should a bulging disc -- which Hecht likened to the insides of a jelly donut pushing against the back wall of the pastry -- worsen, and the gushy insides herniate and seep out, causing numbness or weakness in the leg (as Woods’ apparently did), a patient may undergo microdiscectomy surgery (which Woods did).

“Lastly, only after conservative care has failed, or the pain is severe, or the patient has developed leg pain or numbness or weakness do we ever talk about doing [microdiscectomy] surgery,” said Hecht, who noted that the procedure removes the herniated piece of disc.

Of course, the back is just the latest in a series of wounds Woods has suffered over the years. Read the roster of such insults (thanks, in part, to Pete Madden and Luke Kerr-Dineen, and categorized by body part) and decide for yourself whether it’s amazing that this broken-down geezer can even bend down to tee it up:

Left knee:

Back:

Neck:

Achilles tendons:

Left elbow:

Miscellaneous: