One of these days, the sports world will look back on golf at the dawn of the 21st century and recoil in both horror and disbelief.

The amount of ineptitude on display has been, is and will continue to be staggering until the game finally takes the Modern Golf Swing out behind the barn and finishes it off like the lame plough horse it is (and is making out of physically-fit golfers).

I said several years ago when Tiger Woods began to have spinal fusion surgeries, that it wouldn’t solve his issues if he kept swinging in the same manner.

Now, a sports injury “expert” has basically confirmed the same thing and I am absolutely appalled at the way he discussed Tiger’s latest surgery with Golf Digest.

Tiger’s seventh surgery involved replacing a spinal disc with an artificial one between his L4 and L5 vertebrae.

The problem, I said back then, is that fusing together the vertebrae removes the damaged disc between them and they become one disc, in essence, removing the possibility of continued problems.

The big problem, is that you are simply transferring the twisting forces to another part of the spine, and you will eventually damage that region the way you did the first one.

In this interview with a sports injury”expert,”   you find out that I was correct:

“He really suffered at the level of L5, S1, the lowest level, where in 2017 he opted for spinal fusion at that level, with the implant hardware on both sides to decompress the nerves, add stability and support, but there is a trade-off with the hardware. Yes, you get a decrease in pain, but you lose a little bit of mobility…

… like I said, the trade-off is fusion. Below it puts undue stress at the disc levels above. Now L4, L5 is in play and suffered a tremendous amount of stress and overload in subsequent years…

… that disc at L4, L5 essentially started to degenerate, develop bone spurs, start to compress the nerve endings yet again.

I’ve taken snippets from a larger text, you can read it for yourself at the link, and I’ve not done so to misguide or change the context, only to shorten it.

In essence, fusing one region of the spine then caused problems in a second area, because Tiger was still swinging the same way.  Not exactly the shock of the century now, is it?

Here is the shocking part, and I can’t believe that someone with a background in sports and sports injuries would say this:

Now, if he opted for a fusion which was successful, he would lose even more mobility and golf would not be even a question because he wouldn’t be able to compete and play at a high level.

So, fast forward, we have this great new technology called an artificial disc. It is still hardware where they removed the old disk. And implant an artificial one.

It still provides a tremendous amount of support, stability and decompresses the nerves. But the hardware does not limit motion and you need that rotation to swing a golf club at a very high level and compete at a high level.

Excusez Moi???

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So you can’t play golf at a high level without twisting your back like a wet dishrag?  This from a sports injury “expert?”

I wouldn’t trust this man to apply a cold compress, to be honest with you.

Twisting the lower back has only been part of golf since people who have no business teaching a golf swing began to teach the Modern Golf Swing.

Before then, you didn’t have to twist your lower back like a wet dishrag in order to get a full shoulder turn.  All you had to do was pivot using the hips and legs.

So, the good news is that Tiger Woods had a successful spinal surgery.

The bad news is that he may continue to play golf, and he’s running out of spine to damage.

Here are some players in the Modern Golf Swing era who did quite well playing “at a high level” swinging the Classic way:

• Vijay Singh
• Phil Mickelson
• Bubba Watson

You notice these guys were all considered long to very long drivers and iron players, and all three of them won majors?

Not only that, Phil Mickelson is the oldest ever winner of a major event, and Vijay Singh holds the record for the most Tour wins (18) over the age of 40.

Like, you have to be still able to play at these older ages to set these records.  Ask Tiger about that.

Phil and Vijay accomplished these feats in the Modern Golf Swing era.

Not too shabby for not swinging in a way that broke their backs.

Remember yours truly at age 46, with a tweaked back (unrelated to swinging), so painful that I could barely tie my shoes or tee my ball up, banging 300+ yard drives back at at a WAX Golf Summit in Arizona in 2016:

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If you take a look at the oldest golfers to win majors, you’ll see that they are all Classic Golf Swing players.

You will likely never get a Modern Golf Swing player into that list, because they will be unable to play golf “at a high level” by that age – Rory McIroy may make it into the bottom tier in their early 40’s but I wouldn’t bet money on it.

I’m not even singling out this chap from the interview, because he won’t be the only one.

But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – no one who considers the Modern Golf Swing the proper way to swing a golf club has any business teaching, analyzing nor even discussing the golf swing.

It is a shocking lack of kinesiological knowledge that I find disqualifying from the word “go.”