Chris Wood analyzes his yardage book during a practice round this week in Thailand.
Kindly
I love a good email subject line, and this one was loaded. “Former Ryder Cup Star Wood set to return from wilderness…”
You better believe it got my click.
The “Wood” we were talking about was, of course, Chris Wood, the 2016 Ryder Cupper, 36-year-old Englishman. Maybe you remember that, but if you don’t, well, even the “desert” part made sense. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time. He is ranked 1535th in the world. But this was not your standard golf desert
“I was diagnosed with chronic anxiety and burnout,” Wood said in the email. “I’ve had a really bad time over the last few years where golf has really taken a toll on me mentally.
“I’ve actually been like this since 2019, but it took maybe four years before I did anything about it. I literally had to stop the bottom and didn’t play at all last year. I took a whole year off and this year has been about trying to get a card back in hand.”
He was not exaggerating. Wood went a full 52 weeks without competing in a sanctioned tournament. This is one TOUGH restored.
Part of my surprise at this information comes from the way it was delivered: via a press release from the Asian Tour International Series, which has gifted Wood two consecutive weeks of exemptions in Thailand. Press releases are almost always fluff. An acknowledgment that a tournament is happening, that a course is opening, that a player has signed with a new apparel sponsor. The quotes you see in press releases are often written by communications staff, or player managers, with formal language and unrealistic emotion. They’re drawn to the brands they associate with and share excitement about what’s to come. This was not so clear. This had weight.
“It’s still very, very difficult,” Wood continued, “but I’m still doing it because I want to, and because I feel like I have a lot more to offer. I know the quality of shots I have and I can hit, that’s why I’m still in it.”
The heights of that man have been very, very high. Wood made the European Ryder Cup team in 2016 and, while they were hit by the Americanshe won one of the two matches he played. He was ranked in the top 30 in the world then, having won the BMW PGA Championship, the main event on the DP World Tour.
At some point in late 2018 or early 2019, the flaws in his movement began to appear more frequently. In 2021, he told John Huggan of Golf Digest about a pro-am in India in early 2019 where he lost eight balls. A few months later, he walked off the golf course during an event in Morocco, showing Digest“I was enough. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
But he had not yet reached the end. Wood made just two cuts in the shortened 2020 season. He made eight cuts in 22 attempts in 2021, and then he had made just one cut in 11 events by the time of the 2022 Scottish Open, where I ran into him at the club.
I was caddying for Joel Dahmen that week and needed a ride from the Renaissance Club, 45 minutes back to Edinburgh. Like most loopers, I was staying at the much cheaper hotel in Scotland’s capital. Only a handful of players were standing there as well, but Chris was one of them. He overheard me asking one of the concierge workers if I could take a ride and went out of his way to invite me on his ride, a Genesis ship just for players.
We talked a lot about that car ride and about serious matters – his favorite soccer club, Manchester United, plus gun control policies in America vs. Scotland. We split up after our driver reached the hotel, while Chris had cleverly placed a dinner order for takeout while we drove. That night’s meal for Chris was as humble as it was for the former Ryder Cuppers: Nando’s chicken.
“Third time this week,” he told me. It’s not glamorous when your game is in the dumps, but he was rolling with the punches. He shot 78 that day.
Two years later, there he was, in my inbox, still dreaming, on the other side of an excruciatingly painful 2023. He made the cut in Thailand on Friday, posting a second straight 69. He has had a string of cuts on the Challenge Tour this summer, the circuit that plays under the DP World Tour. He will play there again next year. But for now, he is wrapping up this week’s event and hopes to play next week as well. The journey continues.
His final words, from what is now the best press release I’ve ever received:
“Ten years ago, if you had told me, you would be in this position mentally, I wasn’t very aware of the meaning of these words, and you have to go through something like this, or someone very close to you goes through it , before you. can appreciate what those battles are really like.
“It’s tough because I still believe I have one more Ryder Cup in me, I really do, and I’m not going to put myself in positions where I feel uncomfortable and exposed again if I don’t feel it’s going to be worth it. .
