Tiger Woods to miss U. S. Open

When Tiger Woods announced Tuesday that he would skip next week’s United States Open at Congressional Country Club because of a “mild” sprain to his medial collateral ligament and a “mild” strain of his Achilles’ tendon, the news came as no surprise and raised more questions than it answered about the extent of the damage to his left leg.


Woods, 35, has been unable to work on his game since withdrawing from the Players Championship last month after shooting 42 for nine holes. Since injuring the leg while hitting a shot at the Masters eight weeks ago, Woods has been rehabilitating the knee and the tendon — to no avail. The announcement on his Web site said the injuries had not sufficiently improved.

“I am extremely disappointed that I won’t be playing in the U.S. Open,” Woods said in the statement. “But it’s time for me to listen to my doctors and focus on the future. I was hopeful that I could play, but if I did, I risk further damage to my left leg.”

Woods’s situation is complicated by his history of injuries to the left knee and by the four operations he has had, most recently a major reconstructive surgery to his anterior cruciate ligament in June 2008. These factors could be complicating his ability to come back from the injury as quickly as he had hoped.

The same is true of what he has called a mild strain to his Achilles’ tendon, which was ruptured in 2008.

Woods will be replaced by the first alternate Michael Whitehead, a 23-year-old amateur from Sugar Land, Tex. Whitehead earned his spot at sectional qualifying Monday at the Dallas Athletic Club.

Jarryd Roughead suffers achilles injury

After leading by 17 points at three-quarter-time after a game of fluctuating fortunes, the Hawks failed to score in the last term as the Cats took their unbeaten run this season to 11 with a five-point win.

Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson confirmed the extent of Roughead's injury after the game last night, saying it was extremely disappointing to lose a third player to a season-ending injury this year.

But he refused to blame Roughead's injury midway through the last quarter for the Hawks' inability to penetrate the Cats' stellar defence in the last term. The Cats added three goals in the last half-hour, all of them before Roughead went down clutching his achilles at the 13-minute-mark.

The Hawks also lost Clinton Young to hamstring soreness before halftime when he was substituted out of the game.

"He (Roughead) has hurt his achilles pretty bad. He is certainly spend a fair amount of time on the sidelines," Clarkson said. "If it is ruptured as we suspect it is, he will miss the rest of the season.

"It's a disappointing injury for us ... he has been in such good form, but we have to move on quickly and find a replacement and keep going.

"We can't sit around and sook for long."

Clarkson said the loss of Roughead, on top of season-ending injuries to key defenders Ben Stratton and Stephen Gilham, would make it hard for the Hawks, but he cited Port Adelaide's experience of 2004 as an example of what can happen with new players coming into the group.

"Teams have won flags like before. I can remember being at Port Adelaide at the start of 2004 and Matty Primus and Josh Francou were hurt early in the season," he said. "Two guys stepped into their roles and they played in their flag. It certainly will test us, but we are not going to give up."

Clarkson said he blamed poor ball use, and Geelong's rock-solid defence, for the loss, and not a potential free-kick that could possibly have gone Lance Franklin's way in the dying moments of the game.

"I don't think it is worth going down that track," he said.


"We ran out of legs and ran out of a couple of soldiers in the end.

"We are around the mark. We wanted to use tonight to see if we had made some improvement since Round 5. I think we have, but we just need a bit more polish with the way we use the footy."

Hawthorn captain Luke Hodge said he did not consider it a mental hurdle that the club had not beaten the Cats since the 2008 Grand Final.

"They have beaten a lot of teams six times in a row," Hodge said. "I wouldn't put it down to a mental thing.

"They have been a good side for the last five or six years. They just find a way to win."

Josh Willingham's achilles injury

Manager Bob Melvin laughed when I asked about Hideki Matsui already being back out of the No. 3 spot that Melvin had said he was putting the DH in regularly.

"I should have come out here with a shoe in my mouth," Melvin said with a smile.

Matsui is batting cleanup today, on his 37th birthday, because Josh Willingham is out with a sore Achilles tendon, the same one that bothered him earlier in the trip. He'll have tomorrow's offday to rest it to and will be back batting cleanup on Tuesday, with Matsui returning to the No. 3 spot. Melvin said Willingham could pinch hit today.

With tomorrow's day off, Melvin is shuffling the rotation a bit, moving Trevor Cahill ahead of Josh Outman. Cahill will go Tuesday against Kansas City, Outman on Wednesday and Gio Gonzalez on Thursday. Graham Godfrey will get another start this week, but the day hasn't been decided. I presume he's getting in a little extra work with A's pitching coach Ron Romanick, which should be valuable since Godfrey wasn't in big-league camp this spring.

The A's are doing something today I haven't seen them do for eons - they're taking infield before the game. Melvin was clear that he'd already planned it and had mentioned it to the team Thursday; it's not punishment for last night's three errors.

Melvin's feeling: When the team hits in the indoor cage before the game rather than on the field, as is often the case with day games after night games, he doesn't want the first ball hit to an infielder to come in the game. He wants them to have taken some grounders already.

So this will be a semi-regular thing. You almost never see it anymore, though it used to be the norm. I know Ron Washington has the Rangers take infield some days, and the Japanese reporters say it's a daily thing in Japan.

The Japanese reporters presented Matsui with a big, beautiful cake this morning. I'll be tweeting (@susanslusser) photos of Matsui blowing out the candles later when the Japanese media gives me the OK - they don't want me scooping them before they can get their own photos published in Japan - because of the time difference, none of their photos would be put up on their own websites for quite a while.

They bought the cake, and it's now in the press box and it's delicious, so I'll honor the request. Happy birthday, Godzilla!