The US Open champion opens on a difficult year

TGL? He? Gary Woodland laugh at the suggestion to play League filled with bells and whistles and hammers and clocks. Golf simulator is stimulating golf.

But then he answers.

“That’s a lot of stimulation, sure,” he said, “but I’ll be ready for it if that call comes.”

Prepared. Woodland used that word a lot, it seems.

This week, the 2019 US Open winner is playing the PGA Tour Sony Openand it’s kind of a milestone. A year ago. Last January, he returned to Sonyabout four months after he underwent an operation in a brain lesion he was diagnosed with in the spring of 2023. He had not been prepared for the period before the procedure. How could he be? At times, as the lesion spread to the part of his brain that controls fear, he said he suffered from thoughts of death.

Neither was he prepared for last year.

How could he be?

Everything was different during his comeback, he said. Other things were reminders.

“Last year was one of the hardest years of my life in terms of everything being new,” Woodland said Wednesday. “I was so grateful to be back in this country last year less than four months after surgery, but everything was new. It was like being a beginner again. I didn’t know what to expect. There were days when I woke up not knowing if I was going to feel good.

“I didn’t know how I was going to be, going back to places where a year ago – talk about PTSD, I’m going through places where, yes, I was drawn back there and I had to call my wife crying because I thought I’d death. I go back to a hotel, I seem to have had multiple seizures in this bed. Everything was new and it was difficult.”

Of course, the results were fair. To start the season, he missed seven cuts in his first 11 events, then missed the weekend just four times the rest of the way, from 13 starts. In October, he posted two of his three top 25s. Physically, Woodland was struggling to cope. He was trying to develop processes. Surgery had only done some work; part of the lesion still remains. At first, he said, he had difficulty being around his children. He should go to another room. “My brain couldn’t keep up. My poor wife has to explain to my kids why dad has to go in the room because too much energy and excitement – my kids are full of life and dad can’t handle it. So I couldn’t be the father I wanted to be.”

“The end of the rock,” he said, came at the end of July in 3M Open. He had played three consecutive weeks, including overseas, in Scotland for him Open Championship. On Friday at 3M, he began to feel unwell. On Saturday, he drowned.

“I walked off the golf course in tears, called my wife and said, I think I’m dying again; it’s all back,” Woodland said. “We went home, I was on the Internet all night. I contacted my doctors. We sat down and began to understand that the scans are stable, this thing has not grown, it has not changed.

“We need ways to slow down the brain.”

More processes were used. “We’ve come up with a few things,” he said. Medicine. Knowing when to close. Breathing exercises – once in the morning, once in the evening, for about an hour in total. He had to rewire himself to fully understand that it was the wound that was causing his feelings of fear and anxiety. “Now the days of waking up in the morning and getting out of bed and just going about my life are over. The days when I would just jump on the bed and go to sleep, it doesn’t work that way anymore. I have to do breath work every morning before I get out of bed. I have to do it again at night because it slows my brain down. I know if I’m playing a few weeks in a row now, I’m going to have to do more to give myself the stamina in my brain to prepare for the stimulation. When I got overstimulated is when I shut down. I didn’t get it last year. I blamed it a lot on the medication. Well, I’m on medication indefinitely, now I know.”

Woodland said he believes he is making progress.

Interestingly, he said, the breathing work has made him a better player; has slowed the heart rate. He has also been able to be around his family more. “Over the last couple of months, I’ve started to see signs,” Woodland said. He said he feels better. He said he feels more in control.

Notably, he said he also feels proud of himself.

“I told myself that week (of the 3 million), which I don’t think I’ve ever told myself — I won the US Open and I had fun and celebrated — but I told myself I was proud of myself that week,” Woodland. said, “because it would have been very easy for me not to play last year, to show up, take a year off, have a medical and from the point of view of the results, maybe that was the thing to do. But I wouldn’t stay optimistic today because I know what I need right now to feel good. I know what I have to do if I’m going to play several weeks in a row. I know the work I have to do to put myself in that situation.

“I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t go through what I went through last year. It stinks to come out here and play and not really have a chance, and it’s not what I signed up for. This is not what my sponsors and all signed up for.”

He said that now he feels more prepared.

It’s that word again.

“I’m as optimistic about my golf game,” Woodland said, “as I have been since winning the US Open in 2019.”

Why?

“One, I’m starting to feel better,” he said. “Two, I understand what I need to do, slowing my brain down, slowing my heart rate. Going back with Randy (Smith, his coach), I’m starting to see signs that I haven’t seen in the game of golf in a long time.

“I think from a golfing point of view I’m in a better position now than I was in 2019, I just had a lot of confidence then. I had played well for 10 years straight. Faith is coming. But I know my game is in a better place and that’s exciting.”

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