Tiger Woods, 45, was found trapped but conscious by emergency responders. It is not known if he was under the influence of some substance.
Award-winning golfer Tiger Woods, who is also notorious for his personal life, was recently in a car crash in Los Angeles. Woods was seriously injured and had to undergo surgery. He is now recovering from a lengthy surgery that was done to repair "significant orthopedic injuries to his right lower extremity." He was in a single-car rollover crash on a steep roadway in a Los Angeles suburb, according to ESPN.
In an official statement on the golfer's Twitter account, Dr. Anish Mahajan of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center was quoted as saying that he had many "open fractures" to his lower right leg. He had to undergo emergency surgery.
"Comminuted open fractures affecting both the upper and lower portions of the tibia and fibula bones were stabilized by inserting a rod into the tibia," said Mahajan, the chief medical officer and interim CEO at Harbor-UCLA. "Additional injuries to the bones of the foot and ankle were stabilized with a combination of screws and pins. Trauma to the muscle and soft-tissue of the leg required surgical release of the covering of the muscles to relieve pressure due to swelling," the doctor added. The bone had broken through the skin and was fractured in multiple pieces.
He was "awake, responsive, and recovering in his hospital room," according to the statement. The update on his condition came almost 15 hours after he was rescued from his damaged car.
The 45-year-old golfer was alone in his 2021 Genesis GV80 SUV while driving downhill in a windy portion of Hawthorne Avenue, which is a two-lane road in Rancho Palos Verdes, according to GolfDigest. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said that the sportsman was driving at a "relatively greater speed than normal" and he had crossed to the wrong side of the road. Then, his vehicle veered off the road entirely and onto a hillside. A neighbor called 911 to alert authorities of the accident. The 45-year-old was trapped but conscious when they arrived on the scene.
The interior of the vehicle is intact, and he was wearing a seatbelt, which allowed him to escape what "otherwise would have been a fatal crash," according to Villanueva. According to CNN, the golfer was able to tell his name to the emergency responders who got to the scene first. Woods also tried to "self-extricate" but couldn't.
Firefighters who reached the scene had to use a pry bar and an ax to get him out of the car. Then they broke the windshield with the ax. They used the pry bar to remove the seats and metal from around Woods' legs. They placed a collar around Woods' neck, attached leg splints, and used a backboard to carry him to an ambulance. He was in a serious but stable condition and had injuries to both legs.
There was no immediate evidence to show if he had consumed alcohol or had been under the influence of a substance, writes ESPN. There had been no signs of braking or of skid marks. "I will say that it's very fortunate that Mr. Woods was able to come out of this alive,'' Deputy Carlos Gonzalez said.
This is not his first car crash. Woods had also crashed his car in 2009 in Florida. His car had collided with a row of hedges and hit a fire hydrant, according to USA Today. The vehicle then hit a tree and came to rest. It had coincided with trouble in his personal life. It took him 10 years since then to win another major.
In 2017, he was arrested and had pleaded guilty to reckless driving, according to ABC. He had two sleep drugs, two painkillers and the active ingredient for marijuana in his system at the time of his arrest.
References:
https://www.espn.in/golf/story/_/id/30951717/tiger-woods-hospitalized-vehicle-rolls-crash
https://www.golfdigest.com/story/tiger-woods-car-accident-los-angeles
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/23/us/tiger-woods-car-accident-intl-spt/index.html
Cover image source: Getty Images | Photo by Andrew Redington
