Thursday, June 4, 1998 | 10:53 a.m.
Keith Kleven, one of the nation's leading physical therapists who is working with Tiger Woods in Las Vegas, said the golfer's recent back problems should not keep him out of this month's U.S. Open.
Kleven, director of the Las Vegas Institute of Orthopaedic Sports and Dance Rehabilitation, confirmed what a spokesman for Woods said earlier this week when Woods withdrew from the PGA Tour's Kemper Open in Potomac, Md.
"All I can say is that he is in (Las Vegas) and (the injury) is nothing major," Kleven said. "He's in doing some special kinds of exercises and they're all preventive things ... it's all designed to keep progressing him through the program that he started several months ago (with me)."
Kleven said he has been working with Woods since the beginning of the year and has developed a program to keep the 22-year-old from developing further back problems as the result of the strain his powerful golf swing puts on his back.
"Tiger has had back pains on and off but his parents have always assumed they were growing pains," Bev Norwood, a spokesman with Woods' management group, said. "This is a precautionary measure to ensure that (Woods) is ready and able to play in the U.S. Open."
The U.S. Open will be played June 18-21 at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.
Kleven, who has worked with such notable athletes as Mike Tyson, Greg Maddux and Mike Morgan, as well as professional golfers Paul Azinger, Mark O'Meara and John Cook, said Woods presents a challenge because of his incredibly hard golf swing.
"Because of the forces and the strength and the physical capabilities that he has, it has to be attacked a little differently than someone else," Kleven said of Woods' conditioning program. "It's very specific to him -- he has gone through lots of testing, all kinds of strength testing.
"It's all geared to make sure he's doing everything properly and that everybody's on the same wavelength as far as what he's doing when I'm not with him."
Kleven said Woods will be in Las Vegas "for several days" undergoing physical therapy. Woods' personal coach, Butch Harmon, also is based in Las Vegas and works out of the Rio Secco Country Club in Henderson.
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