Gary Woodland won on Sunday the Texas Children’s Houston Open, qualified for the Masters at Augusta and recorded his first victory on the PGA Tour since the 2019 US Open. But the deeper story, the one that matters most, goes beyond the trophy. And not to seek the macabre or the lurid, but quite the opposite, for the help it can offer to someone else. What Woodland revealed after winning carries a lot of weight. What he experienced on Friday. The difficulties he has endured in silence over the past four years and how he has managed to come out of that dark tunnel.
Woodland explained that in the final ten holes of the second round he went through a very tough moment. “On the 9th, some people behind the ropes came too close and I became extremely hypervigilant”, he said. The term is no accident. Three weeks ago he made public on Golf Channel that he suffers from post-traumatic stress as a consequence of the 2023 brain surgery, when a tumour pressing on the area of the brain that controls anxiety and fear was removed.
What happened to him on Friday in Houston was an episode related to that issue. And Woodland was very clear in explaining it. “I’ll tell you this: if it weren’t for Tour security and for my personal security, Zach, this week, there would be no way I would be sitting here right now”, he said.
It is the confession of someone who has been through a very bad time and who has realised that, while he has not left the syndrome behind, he has managed to keep it more or less under control. “I was shattered over the final ten holes that day. I went in to turn in my card, Zach came up to me, Tour security was visible, I could see them and that calmed me. I went into the scoring area, I started crying uncontrollably, I reset and was able to go back out and take care of everything afterwards”, he recounted.
It is the other side of victory. The difficulty of living each day with a trauma. Woodland hasn’t just played a great tournament. He won while still managing a very delicate personal situation. And he has done so, he explains, feeling much more liberated since he decided to stop hiding it. To speak out. “Getting out, talking and asking for help — I didn’t do that last year. I didn’t do it at the start of this year either”, he said. And he added: “I’m in a fight. And with the love and support I have around me, I have hope”.
The release began three weeks ago, when he decided to speak publicly about what is happening to him. Woodland admitted on Sunday that that took a huge weight off his shoulders. “It freed me a bit. It took a lot of weight off me. It allowed me to focus my energy where I need to, which is on myself and on looking after myself”, he said.
That is another key aspect this week. Previously, much of his effort went into trying to make sure nobody noticed what was happening. Now, no. “When I’m out here playing and people talk to me and all that, and I’m trying to hide the battle I’m fighting, I was wasting a huge amount of energy on that. Now that people know what I’m fighting, I focus my energy on trying to lower my heart rate, on trying to slow down the speed of my thoughts”, he explained.
Woodland had been giving signs. He missed the cut at THE PLAYERS, finished 14th at the Valspar and in Houston put the finishing touches on a huge week. He won convincingly, although he did not feel it that way from the inside. “In my head it felt much closer than that five-shot margin”, he said. That said, he acknowledged the level of golf was extremely high. “Probably, from start to finish, this has been one of the best weeks of golf I’ve played on the Tour, perhaps the best. This week I was completely in control, even more so than at the 2019 US Open”.
He also made it clear that the victory did not come from nowhere. “I knew that physically my game was as good as ever. I just had to fight other battles that I’m dealing with, and this week I was able to do it”, he noted.
Woodland spoke with enormous affection about the people who have supported him through this process. Especially his wife, Randy Smith, his coach, and his whole team. “You can’t wage this battle alone, and luckily I’m not fighting it alone”, he summed up. About his wife he went even further: “She has been the rock throughout this process. I couldn’t do this without her and I wouldn’t be here without her”.
And about Randy Smith, much more than a coach, he offered a touching confession. “My wife told me I needed something more than a golf coach and to call Randy”, he explained. “I needed him for much more than golf. He stepped up and has helped me get to this point”.
The final scene, with Woodland sealing the victory and letting out a breath, was a great release. “Just grateful”, he said. “I kept telling myself all the time that I wasn’t going to let this thing in my head beat me. Since they diagnosed this in my brain, the whole idea was that I wasn’t going to let it win. Today was proof of that”.
That’s the news. Yes, Woodland won in Houston. Yes, he returns to the Masters. Yes, he adds his fifth victory on the PGA Tour. But the most important thing is something else. That on Friday he cried. That he asked for help. That he received it. That he no longer hid. And that two days later he lifted a trophy with a story behind it much bigger than the tournament itself.
