Lt. Col. Dan Rooney calls the cockpit of a fighter jet an “emotionally intense place.” He would know. Rooney served three combat tours in Iraq behind the stick of an F-16 Viper before transitioning to a recruiting and training role with the Oklahoma Air Guard. War carries an obvious emotional toll, but so, Rooney will tell you, does mentoring young pilots. Indeed, any extended period of flight at Mach 2 inside a roughly 70-inch-by-50-inch bubble tent, regardless of your mission, will leave you feeling a few things when you return to earth.
“You don’t realize all the things you’re processing until you start walking away from it,” Rooney told me in a phone interview Monday.
The condition is called post-traumatic stress disorder, which the Mayo Clinic says is caused by “an extremely stressful or terrifying event — either being a part of it or witnessing it.” Symptoms include, but are not limited to, nightmares, severe anxiety, and dark, uncontrollable thoughts. Rooney’s PTSD, he said, manifested itself in claustrophobia, discomfort in crowds and a tendency to be startled by loud noises.
“The driving mechanisms,” he said. “But I’ve never had anything as intense as what Gary is going through.”
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That would be it Gary WoodlandThe 41-year-old Tour pro who won his fifth PGA Tour title at the Texas Children’s Houston Open on Sunday. That Woodland was playing at Memorial Park at all was a triumph of the human spirit. That he won the tournament walking away was one of the greatest feats of tenacity and overcoming a Tour pro.
Even if you only follow the game casually, you’re probably aware of Woodland’s travails. About three years ago, Woodland began experiencing a series of terrifying symptoms, including tremors, loss of appetite, uncontrollable tremors at night and a constant fear of death — all, he soon learned, caused by a tumor pressing on the part of the brain that controls fear and anxiety. In September 2023, doctors opened Woodland’s skull and removed most, but not all, of it in a high-risk operation that could have cost Woodland his sight among other functions. The procedure was deemed successful, and Woodland soon felt better, so much so that in January 2025 he returned to the PGA Tour, at the Sony Open.
“It’s ‘What can I handle?'” Woodland said at the time. “Next week will be four months since the surgery. That’s probably the date they said after four months I should be pretty good. We’ll see.”
Woodland missed the cut and six more cuts in his next 10 starts. By the end of the season he had shown signs of more consistency, but still finished 155th in the FedEx Cup standings. In 2025, Woodland improved, finishing 72nd in the points race, but with just one top-10 finish in 22 starts, he was still a long way from the player who won the 2019 US Open at Pebble Beach. Then came 2026, and what looked like a regression in form, with three missed cuts in his first five starts.
What most observers didn’t know, however, was that Woodland was still fighting—not shaking off demons so much as the ones that can burrow into your head. Week after week, as fans, tournament staff and volunteers, and even other Woodland players sought him out, Woodland had suffered in silence. That was until the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass earlier this month, when Woodland finally broke that debilitating silence and opened up about his ongoing struggles in a heartbreaking interview with Golf Channel reporter Rex Hoggard.
Woodland revealed that he had been diagnosed with PTSD about a year ago and was struggling, often mid-round, with symptoms such as anxiety and hypervigilance. Woodland described a round in Napa when he was shocked by a walking scorer. He was so nervous that for the rest of the round, Woodland said, he found himself going into the bathroom to cry. “There are days when it’s hard — crying in the scoring trailer, running to my car just to hide it,” he told Hoggard. “I don’t want to live that way anymore.”
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Woodland began his collegiate sports career as a basketball player at Washburn University in his hometown of Topeka, Kans., before transferring to the University of Kansas to play golf. During Woodland’s stay at UK, his now-deceased college coach, Ross Randall, introduced Woodland to a former UK golf pilot named Dan Rooney, who was in town for a Jayhawks football game. This was in 2006.
Woodland and Rooney hit it off – literally. They played a round of golf together and it didn’t take long for Rooney to realize that Woodland was a rare talent. “He hit it harder and faster than anyone I’ve ever seen,” Rooney said. “I’m like this guy is like Superman.”
Rooney has his superhero qualities. In 2007, between combat tours in Iraq, he founded Folds of Honora nonprofit organization that funds scholarships for spouses and children of fallen or disabled military service members and first responders; since its inception, the foundation has awarded nearly 73,000 scholarships totaling $340 million. Rooney also founded Patriot Golf Club in Tulsa, Okla., where Folds of Honor is headquartered, and American Dunes in Grand Haven, Mich., from which all proceeds go back to Rooney’s foundation.
He hit her harder and faster than anyone I had ever seen. I’m like this guy is like Superman.
Dan Rooney to Gary Woodland
Woodland, who had grandparents who served in the military, was drawn to Rooney and his causes. Rooney said that the day Woodland earned his PGA Tour card in 2008, he called Rooney and said he wanted to put the Folds of Honor emblem on his bag. Woodland has since become one of the foundation’s most visible ambassadors.
But Rooney and Woodland’s relationship extends far beyond charity golf outings. In 2011, Rooney flew to Tampa to celebrate Woodland’s first PGA Tour with him (and, Rooney jokes now, talked Woodland’s then-girlfriend Gabby Granado out of law school so she could travel to the PGA Tour with Gary). In 2016, when Gary and Gabby got married, Rooney made it official. In 2019, when Woodland broke through for his big win, he was wearing the logo of Volition America, a clothing brand Rooney started to help fund and raise awareness for Folds of Honor. “We went from nothing to owning this patriotic space,” Rooney said.
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Rooney and Woodland have at least one thing in common: their Christian faith. Rooney describes himself as Team Woodland’s “prayer warrior,” adding, “Whenever there’s been something really difficult in the Woodland family, I think that’s where I fit in with the calls that come to me like, ‘Hey, we need to pray.’
One of those times came in September 2023 when doctors drilled a fist-sized hole in Woodland’s skull and removed most of a lesion pressing on his amygdala, an almond-shaped structure inside the temporal lobe that initiates fear and produces anxiety. Rooney said it’s hard to overstate the gravity of the operation. “It’s just unimaginable where this tumor was and how devastating this surgery was,” Rooney said. The tumor was benign, but “they still don’t fully understand what it was,” Rooney said. “They know what it wasn’t.”
Rooney knew that surgery, while effective, was not a solution. He knew his friend was still suffering. And scared. And that he might have returned to the Tour sooner than he should have. But Rooney said it was only in the last two months that he became fully aware of “what the world knows now”.
Rooney knows many military veterans besides himself who have struggled with PTSD. They have described to him the feeling of being stuck in their heads – in “emotional pits” – and, in the worst cases, told that taking their own lives is the only way out. “That’s the part that I think people have a really hard time understanding,” Rooney said.
Rooney knew Woodland was experiencing overwhelming feelings of hypervigilance, which made it difficult for him to be around crowds. So when Woodland accepted a vice-captaincy in Keegan Bradley’s USA Ryder Cup team last year, Rooney was concerned. “I’m like, ‘How in the world are you going to go into the Ryder Cup feeling this way and dealing with this stuff?'” Rooney said. But the week turned out to be a break for Woodland. In his Golf Channel interview at the Players, Woodland said being around his Tour teammates and close friends put him at ease. “I didn’t have to hide it,” he said. “I can be myself.”
Good days and bad days. This is how Woodland described his journey. One of the bad days came just last week, the Friday of the Houston Open. When Woodland arrived in the 9th set, where fans were pressed against the rope line, he said his hypervigilance kicked in. The security of the tournament helped Woodland, but he said, “I was a wreck the last 10 holes that day.” After the round, when he visited the mark to sign for a five-under 65 that would have given him a 54-hole lead of one, Woodland said he was “cracked”.
But then came something Woodland had been unable to do in recent months: a mental reset. He calmed down and minded his own business, knowing that one of the biggest rounds of his career lay ahead. “I’m in a fight,” he said. “(But) with the love and support I have around me, I have hope.”
On Sunday, Woodland coolly shot 67 to win by five. As he walked down 18th fairway, crowds chanted his name — “Ga-ry! Ga-ry!” — prompted by one of Woodland’s playing partners, Min Woo Lee. After Woodland holed the winning shot, Gabby joined her on the 18th green and Gary fell into her arms and cried. If you had no lumps, you had no pulse.
Rooney wasn’t there to celebrate with his friend but, on Palm Sunday, he texted Woodland from afar. The gist of the message: “This is not about you.
;)
