Tiger Woods received multiple injuries on Tuesday morning in a “single vehicle roll-over traffic collision” as said by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
According to the department’s Twitter account, the vehicle sustained “major damage” in the accident, which took place at 7:12 a.m. Woods was the only occupant of the car, and was extricated through the front windshield. He was taken to nearby Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
This morning @LMTLASD responded to a roll-over collision in which @TigerWoods was injured. Please see our statement… pic.twitter.com/cSWOxKZC1w
— LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) February 23, 2021
Woods was in the driver’s seat of a mangled SUV that rolled and ended up on its side down a steep roadway in the Los Angeles suburbs Tuesday morning, seatbelt still fastened, both legs seriously injured.
He was lucid enough to give his name —“Tiger” — to the sheriff’s deputy who had poked his head through a hole in the windshield.
“At that moment, it clicked in my mind and I immediately recognized him as Tiger Woods,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Carlos Gonzalez said Tuesday.
The golfer was in Los Angeles over the weekend as tournament host of the Genesis Invitational that ended Sunday, and then to film content for his sponsor, Discovery-owned GOLFTV. He was not playing while recovering from a fifth back surgery on Dec. 23.
Woods was alone in the SUV when it crashed into a raised median, crossed two oncoming lanes and rolled several times, authorities said at a news conference. Police said Woods was alert as firefighters pried open the front windshield to get him out.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said the airbags deployed and the inside of the SUV stayed mostly intact, which “gave him a cushion to survive the crash.”
Woods was not under the influence of any drug
There was no immediate evidence that Woods was impaired. Authorities said they checked for any odor of alcohol or other signs he was under the influence of a substance and found none. They didn’t say how fast he was driving.
The crash happened about 7:15 a.m. on a sweeping, downhill stretch of a two-lane road through upscale suburbs.
The champion golfer went through a back surgery earlier this year.