Driving While Hurting

   Attach any superlative description that you wish to what Tiger Woods accomplished last weekend.
   Admirable, courageous, determined, gritty, heroic, remarkable, sensational, wondrous.
   All apply.
   The man essentially won the U.S. Open golf tournament on one leg, his right.
   Woods, we now know, was suffering throughout the event at Torrey Pines in San Diego with a torn  anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.  Additionally, there were two stress fractures in his left shinbone.
   This likely is the ultimate example in sports history of an athlete "Playing Hurt" and persevering to win.
   NASCAR drivers, especially, can appreciate the indomintable will of Tiger Woods, who walked on that one leg for 94 holes over five days.
   Through the years dozens of drivers have endured excruciating pain from injuries. suffered in crashes, but mustered the mettle to motor on.

   A few very special examples involving NASCAR stars come to mind:
   --In the early 1970s, stock car racing's "King," Richard Petty, sustained a fracture in his neck.  The injury was kept hush-hush.  Only a few members of the tight-knit Petty team at the family operation's shop in Level Cross, N.C., knew about it.  "We had to keep it secret from NASCAR officials," said Petty.  "No way they would have let me race if they'd found out about it.  I won several races with a broken neck.  Yeah, it hurt, 'specially at tracks where the G-forces put a lot of strain on the neck.  But it would have hurt worse not to get to race."
   --In 1976 Bobby Allison wrecked horrifyingly at N.C. Motor Speedway near Rockingham.  His car became airborne and tumbled almost the length of the backstretch.  It looked terrible.  Allison  escaped with no broken bones, but was badly battered and bruised.  Plus, the violence of the crash had caused one of his eyes to pop from its socket, so he was in severe pain about the forehead.  Allison was held  for three days at a hospital near Pinehurst.  Because of soreness, he barely could move.   There was doubt he'd be able to make his way into a car for the next race at Richmond a week later.  But Allison was determined to run, and he had a plan.  He commissioned someone to sew what amounted to "handles" onto his driving uniform so teammates could lift him into the cockpit.
   --In 1982 Dale Earnhardt suffered a badly broken left knee when he and pal Tim Richmond tangled in turn one at Pocono, Pa.  Earnhardt's car hit that corner's boiler-plate steel wall so hard it punched a hole in it.  The car then got airborne and flew so high it almost struck an observation tower in which there were radio announcers.  Earnhardt returned to his home in Mooresville, N.C., and went to see his family physician, Dr. Bill Skeen, on Monday morning.  Dr. Skeen, now retired,  remembers the visit well.  "Dale's left knee was swollen to twice the size of the right--it was full of blood," says Dr. Skeen.  "I knew right away what it was.  Dale, who was in immense pain, had suffered a tybial plateau fracture of the knee.  He needed a screw put in the knee and leg as soon as possible.  'No operation!  Not right now!' Dale told me.  'If I do that, NASCAR won't let me race Sunday at Talladega.'  So I arranged for a surgeon in Statesville (N.C.) to put a full leg cast with rods on the leg until Dale could have the operation.  He went to Talladega on crutches.  That knee had to be killing him, and pain shot everywhere if he touched anything even a little bit with his left toe."  Earnhardt was driving for team owner  Bud Moore at the time.  Moore made some excuse to NASCAR about taking his Lincoln Town Car into the garage area while the teams were at Talladega.  He got approval.  "We had the windows tinted in the Lincoln, and I hid out in the back seat every minute I wasn't in the race car," Earnhardt told me years later.  "If NASCAR officials had seen the shape I was in, I'm sure they wouldn't have let me run."  Earnhardt qualified 18th, but was forced from the race when he and arch-rival Geoff Bodine crashed on the 29th lap.
   --In 1984 Ricky Rudd rode through one of the most spectacular accidents ever witnessed at Daytona International Speedway.  Racing in the Busch Class special event,  Rudd spun in the short chute coming off the fourth turn, and when his car  slipped sideway it became like an airplane wing.  The car lifted high into the air and started twisting like a corkscrew before nosing down and flipping seven times with parts flying in all directions.  Observers feared the worst.  However, Rudd was only banged and battered, especially about the eyes.  Ricky's eyes blackened and swelled shut as if he'd been in a boxing ring with Joe Frazier.  His team, led by owner Bud Moore, taped Rudd's eyes OPEN so he could see to run in the Daytona 500 a few days later.  Rudd finished 7th in the classic.  His eyes were mere slits and were partially taped open  again a week later for the Miller 400 at Richmond Raceway.  In one of the top tough man feats ever in NASCAR, Rudd won that trace.
   --In 1985 Cale Yarborough was swept into a crash in the first turn at N.C. Motor Speedway.  "It was one of the hardest hits I ever saw a car of mine take," recalls well-known crew chief Waddell Wilson, leading Yarborough's team at the time.  "It banged Cale's shoulders and legs up badly, but typical of him--the toughest man I saw in all my years in racing--he said little about it and wouldn't go for treatment.  He didn't want to miss any races.  I could tell Cale was hurting the rest of his career, 'cause when a race was over, he'd sit in his cars the longest time, gathering himself, then get out and lean against the car until almost everyone had gone.   You know, that rascal never did have those injuries worked on 'til he retired after the '88 season."
   --In autumn of 1987 Neil Bonnett  slammed the wall so savagely at Lowe's Motor Speedway near Charlotte that he sustained grave injuries with fractures of a hip and leg.   He was hurt so badly that the track's lead surgeon, Dr. Jerry Petty, got in the car with Neil where it came to a stop near the start/finish line and gave him a shot of morphine to ease the pain until the emergency crew could  remove Bonnett from the machine.  For a few hours doctors at a hospital in nearby Concord felt they might have to amputate the leg.  However, they saved it.  Through excruciating rehabilitation and therapy, Bonnett somehow got himself in shape to enter the Daytona 500 the following February.  "For me, just going through the tunnel at Daytona in '88 was a victory," said Bonnett.  He qualified 14th for the 500, then finished fourth behind his great Alabama friends, the father-son duo of Bobby and Davey Allison, and third-place Phil Parsons.  Bonnett, who limped noticeably the rest of his life, then streaked to three straight victories in as many Sundays, winning at Richmond, at The ThunderDome in Australia, and at N.C. Motor Speedway.  The surge by Bonnett, who tragically was killed in a crash at Daytona International Speedway in 1994, remains among the most remarkable in the history of NASCAR, which dates to 1949.
   Bonnett's bravery. and his drive to defeat distressing pain, will forever be remembered as Tiger Woodsian.