After a difficult 2024 after a brain tumor removal, Gary Woodland and his wife Gabby worked to find a new normal that will allow him to compete in PGA Tour.
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Gary Woodland’s story is a courage.
The 2019 Open Open Champion has been open to brain tumor He had left in 2023 and his difficult journey since then. Woodland let Netflix cameras in last year for Season 3 of “swing full” And he has continued to discuss openly about the battles he is facing while working to rediscover his shape on the course and find a new normal.
Before Open Sony Open 2025, described Woodland How scary was his 2024 season As he tried to fight in headaches and the “overvaluation” that came with the golf game of the tournament.
“Last year was one of the most difficult years of my life from the point of view everything was new,” Woodland said in Sony. “I was very grateful for returning to this place last year, less than four months of surgery, but everything was new. It was like I was again novice. I didn’t know what to expect. There were days awake, I didn’t know if I would feel good.
“I don’t know how I would be, returning to places where a year ago – talk about PTSD, I’m traveling through places where, yes, I retired there and had to call my wife crying because I thought I would die.
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But Woodland and his wife Gabby worked to find solutions to help him manage things and continue playing in PGA Tour. These answers included respiratory techniques and medicines to help slow down his brain when stimulation becomes very high.
This has Woodland to feel optimistic about his game in early 2025. He posted three Top-25 ends in four events and is managing his new normal well.
“At the end of the day, I’m struggling,” Woodland said Wednesday at the Classic Classic in Palm Beaches after receiving PGA Tour’s courage. “The last thing that will allow this is to allow this in my head to stop my dreams, and that’s why I fight every day. I want to be there for my kids and my family, but I also want to follow my dreams. I have a lot of dreams here.
“I’m starting to figure out what I have to do every day to work in life, but the things I’m doing to help with my brain is also helping me play Golf, and I’m knocking on the door. I know my game is near. It’s coming, and I’ll keep knocking on that door until I go, and then we’ll see what happens.”
Woodland is the seventh player who has received courage warding, who is given to “a person who, through courage and perseverance, has overcome extraordinary disasters, such as personal tragedy or damage or damage or illness, to make a significant and significant contribution to the Golf game.”
On Wednesday, Woodland continued to pull the curtain into a 2024 challenge and how he and his wife sailed everything so he could be in a space to compete at the highest level.
“The unknown is what is so scary,” Woodland said. “As athletes, especially playing an individual sport, for the most part we all control the fresco. We like to control everything around us. Being out of control – I haven’t had control over what is happening to my brain. The difficult thing is, and this is an experience with which my family and everyone, we have to deal with it, is physically good.
Woodland admits he probably shouldn’t have played in 2024. He could have taken a medical exclusion and returned in 2025, but golf is what he loves and is “proud” that pushed him last season even if he should not have.
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“But I learned a lot,” Woodland said. “If I hadn’t played last year, there is no way for me to sit here today as optimistic about my game as I am because I realized what hurts me and what not.
“I didn’t know that last year. Stimulating playing – there are many things that go only by appearing and playing golf tours. We have a lot of things to do every week. It is not just to show up and play on Thursday until Sunday. You play many weeks. You throw big championships there. You throw tours there with a lot of stimulation – my brain could not handle it. I didn’t understand it. The scary part to me was, is this what will be like the rest of my life? “
Woodland credits Gabby to allow him to be lit and complained as he fought in 2024. But by the end of the season, he said, Gabby would hear the channel session and then ask how they would fix it. What was the solution?
This led to Woodlands to go all over the country to different specialists, until they found a way for Gary to calm his brain, solve his nervous system, and live the life he wants.
“Now I have hope,” Woodland said. “Everyday I get up, I know I have a lot of work in front of me that day, but I know I can work. I know I can spend time with my kids now. I don’t have to leave the room when my kids get excited. I’m returning my life.”
