It may be fitting that Tiger Woods not only stands alone in the sport of golf, but also with a new physical injury that's not common with golfers or even Woods' gender. The ligament in the knee called the anterior cruciate is one part of the knee that gets injured often when a person plays a physically-demanding sport for a living involving the use of the legs, even though it's never been seen in golf players or that many men. That's why when Tiger Woods developed a torn ligament in this region of his knee, doctors couldn't figure out how he managed to get it. Then people started studying his golf swing and realizing that the technique of his swings is so different and intense that he twisted his knee repeatedly. With that, you'll never look at golf as being an upper body sport ever again if you ever manage to get one-tenth of Tiger Woods' skill on the golf course.

Now, as Woods consults with his doctors about surgery, he should also have to consult with fellow female athletes who've suffered with this ever since the modern era of sports began.

And while it might boggle the minds of some doctors that Tiger Woods, of all people, could get this condition, many doctors still ponder why women athletes happen to get the condition more often than men do. The more recent consensus has been that a vital part of this ligament in women called the intercondylar notch is designed a little differently than it is in men. There's also the blame of high estrogen levels in women being a factor, even though this and the other explanation have reportedly been a study done by men. Female researchers very well could have a tendency to disagree with some of the findings, which may explain some of the debates about why this happens to women so often.

In the endless forwarding of the anatomical differences between men and women, it's also been studied that women have weaker hamstrings than men do and that they put more pressure on the quadriceps when twisting their knees in particular sports–hence bringing on the condition without the aid of some special training. Also, women have been accused of having a straighter posture when they run than men do that could also be a cause of more stress on the knees.

Yeah, sure, I also hear the bickering at those research tables between men and women researchers as well as you do. Let's take a little deeper look into at least one of those studies, though, and see if we can extract some kind of truth here.

The mysterious studies on hormone levels in athletic women…

In 2005, a doctor and a group of colleagues at Vanderbilt University did a study on the correlation between how women's hormone levels were at a high level when they sustained injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (or ASL for short). This was proven through a three-year study where 65 women athletes were carefully tested while performing various kinds of sports as either a career or on a regular basis as a hobby. In every single case, the women who sustained an ASL injury were in the middle of ovulation. Yet, despite all that time studying this indisputable result, the doctors couldn't really explain why the abundance of estrogen affected that crucial ligament in the knee.

Despite that, this study won an award for its astuteness. There's no denying it was a major discovery in perhaps paving a way to help women athletes overcome this injury when it's actually one of the leading causes of injury for women in sports and only getting worse by the year.

While it's probably a bit of hyperbole that there's a battle of the genders behind the research on this matter, many women researchers on the topic accept the results for what they are and seek out methods to help solve the problem after seeing hundreds if not thousands of women basketball and soccer players (as just a couple) repeatedly suffering with this condition. While some of these researchers are still trying to figure out themselves why high estrogen levels are a direct cause of an ACL injury, they've been a lot smarter than the men and managed to come up with effective ways to prevent this type of injury from recurring. In recent years, better training programs to help in jumping and landing in sports have been implemented as a way to prevent the problem rather than obsess over what causes it.

One of the most successful is called plyometric training that enables young female athletes to jump and land in the right body positions so it doesn't put stress on the knees. It's likely all of the female Olympic gymnasts you'll see in the Beijing Summer Olympics (a month and a half away at the time of this writing) are taking this type of training so you don't start seeing anterior cruciate ligament injuries as a major headliner. It's quite oddball that Tiger Woods ended up making these type of injuries more mainstream when they've been quietly affecting Olympic athletes for decades.

But with that special training to avoid the injury, it brings Tiger Woods back into the equation and wondering whether unique sports technique can really be changed.

Taking away bad (but still good) habits…

If ever the term “if it ain't broke, don't fix it” had such a solid (if alternate antithesis) meaning, it's now with Woods' ASL injury that'll sideline him for probably a year from this writing. It nevertheless has to be argued that when you have a certain physical technique to help you excel at a particular sport or art, it's almost impossible to unlearn it if you've been doing it naturally for years. Tiger's golf swing arguably stands alone of any in history in its sheer speed. Compare it perhaps to say a pianist who learns how to play piano in a way that isn't really healthy for the hands, but it works. I know from my own experience playing piano that when you have a natural hand position approach to making you sound good, you're not going to have someone force it away from you.

The reality that Tiger Woods could have (according to his doctors) this ASL injury recur later in his career just shows how using our bodies in an unconventional way in sports or physical art is a true risk to gain success in the immediate term. Most people wouldn't even hesitate to give the vote of confidence that Woods should, after surgery, continue his swing technique, pressure on his ligaments in his knee be damned. Woods has just made this bizarre phenomenon something to think about for anybody who plays sports in physically unconventional ways.

Also, Tiger may have just been an unknowing mediator in the possible battle of the sexes that ASL injuries are only in women athletes. The more male athletes out there who use their bodies abusively to gain better sporting technique, all the better to conveniently take away at least one part of that “men being from Mars and women being from Venus” myth.

Sources:

www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/cybertherapist/front/knee/anteriorcruciate.htm

Hope Solo (born 30 July 1981, in Richland, Washington) is an American Soccer netkeeper currently playing for Saint Louis Athletica of Women's Professional Soccer and is a member of the United States women's national Football team.

Here is a site for Hope Solo fans. Pictures, videos, news and all other stuff.

Soccer career

Hope Solo played Football with the Three-River's Soccer Club in the Tri-Cities. She played forward until the end of high school, when she switched to goalkeeper. Solo played for several U.S. junior national Soccer teams before joining the full U.S. national team in 2000. She was called a member of the Olympic team in 2004, getting the 2004 Olympics in Athens as an alternative. Hope Solo became the team's starting goalie in 2005. She has recorded various clean sheets and once went 1,054 minutes without allowing a goal (a streak that ended in a 4-1 victory against France in the Algarve Cup).

As a forward in high school, Hope Solo scored 109 goals, leading her team to three consecutive league titles from 1996-1998 and a state championship in her senior year. She was twice named a Parade All American.

At the University of Washington, Solo switched to the goalie place and was the team's all-time leader in clean-sheets, saves, and goals-against average (GAA). She was a 4-time All-Pac-10 pick and a three-time NSCAA All-American.

Following her college career, Hope Solo was drafted for the now defunct WUSA team Philadelphia Charge in 2003. She also played for Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC of Göteborg, Sweden in the Swedish Premier Division in 2004 and for Olympique Lyonnais in the French First Division in 2005.

On September 16, 2008, Hope Solo was one of the three players outlined for Saint Louis Athletica in the WPS allocation of national team members, with the new league (a revival of the WUSA) starting play in April 2009. Solo let in 6 goals in the first 4 games as Athletica got off to a very slow 0-2-2 start in their first season, but she (and the rest of the team) stepped up after that, with Solo only letting in eight goals in her next thirteen games, finishing the season with eight shutouts.

In 2009 was called the WPS goalkeeper of the Year.

2007 FIFA Women's World Cup

Hope Solo was the starting goalkeeper for the United States in the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup, giving up two goals in 4 games including consecutive shutouts of Sweden, Nigeria and England. Heading into the semifinal match against Brazil, U.S. manager Greg Ryan benched Solo in favor of 36-year-old veteran U.S. keeper Briana Scurry, who had a strong history of performance against the Brazilians but had not played a complete game in three months. The U.S. lost to Brazil 4-0, ending a 51-game (regulation time) undefeated streak, while playing much of the match with 10 players after midfielder Shannon Boxx received a second yellow card at the end of the first half.

Post-2007 World Cup fallout

In an impromptu interview following the match, a clearly upset Hope Solo criticized Ryan's decision. “It was the bad decision, and I think anybody that knows anything about the game knows that. There's no doubt in my mind I would have made those saves. And the fact of the matter is it's not 2004 anymore. It's not 2004. And it's 2007, and I think you have to live in the present. And you can't live by big names. You can't live in the past. It doesn't matter what somebody did in an Olympic gold medal game in the Olympics 3 years ago. Now is what matters, and that's what I think.” Many viewed her comments as being critical of Scurry's performance, although Hope Solo released an apologetic statement the following day saying that was not her intent. On September 29, 2007, manager Greg Ryan announced that Hope Solo would not be with the team and would not play in the third-place match against Norway the following day. Team captain Kristine Lilly stated that the decision on Solo was made by the team as a group. The U.S. went on to win against Norway 4-1.

Hope Solo was called to the U.S. women's national Soccer team roster for the post World Cup tour, but she did not attend the first workout ahead of the first game against Mexico. The players' contract with the confederation stipulated that anyone on the World Cup roster had the right to play in the tour. Greg Ryan stated, “We're initiating a process of reconciliation, and in doing that you can't mandate reconciliation. This isn't a made for Hollywood love story, this is a real story, and we're all working at that.” She was present for, but did not play in any of, the three games against Mexico, being substituted by Briana Scurry for the first and third matches, and Nicole Barnhart for the second. The third match against Mexico, on October 20, 2007, marked the end of the U.S. women's national team's 2007 season. The team reorganized in January 2008 to begin preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Ryan left the team after his contract was not renewed in December 2007

Beijing Olympics 2008

On June 23, 2008, it was declared Hope Solo would be the starting netkeeper for the U.S. team at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In a reversal of roles from the 2004 Olympics, Brianna Scurry did not make the team (though she was an alternate). On August 21, the U.S. women's team won the gold medal by defeating Brazil 1–0 in extra time in no small measure due to Solo's outstanding performance as she stopped an energetic Brazil attack, making save after save.

Personal life

Hope Solo's parents divorced when she was 6; while she lived with her mother, she remained close to her father, a sometimes-homeless veteran who remained a superior influence in her life until his sudden death in June 2007. She attended Richland High School and the University of Washington.