"He would hit four or five balls, then limp to the cart for a rest."

John Huggan gets Hank Haney to talk about the weeks leading up to the Open and Tiger's knee prognosis.

"Three weeks before the US Open he couldn't walk. It was about then he started hitting balls and trying to play a little bit. I watched him practise. He would hit four or five balls, then limp to the cart for a rest. He'd sit down for a few minutes, then limp back to the balls and hit four or five more. That was all he could do.

"At that time he was insistent that he was going to play in Jack Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village. I just shook my head. 'Bud,' I said, 'how are you going to do that? You can't even walk.'

"His feeling was that he had to play in the Memorial because he was so rusty. But he couldn't walk from the kitchen to the dining room table without bending over, he was in so much pain. So there was no way he could play."

With the Memorial proving a tournament too soon, Woods' mind then shifted to the possibility of making it to the US Open.

"He started playing a little bit, but never more than a few holes at a time and always in a cart," recalls Haney. "In fact, he didn't play more than 72 holes total between the Masters and the US Open. When we went to Torrey Pines the weekend before the tournament I told him he had to try and walk at least nine holes. Just to see if he could do it.

"So I drove the cart and he walked nine holes. He made it, but only just. I was asking him if he could bend down to read putts. He said, as he always does, 'I'll be all right.' But I made him do it. So he tried. He could get down okay, but he had to lean on his putter to get back up again. Even then he was still saying he'd be all right!

"Anyway, he walked nine holes on the Sunday, then nine more on the Monday. And he couldn't hit more than 50 balls on either day. Whether he was going to play was in doubt right up to the last minute."