Earlier this month, PGA Tour golfer Gary Woodland opened up to Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard about his arduous, emotional recovery after undergoing brain surgery in September 2023.
“I’m still struggling,” Woodland said on March 9. “About three years ago now, we found the lesion on my brain, and I had the surgery a couple of months later. That part has been amazing. The doctors went in, and they removed as much as they could. They removed the part that was causing the seizures and the episodes I was having, and I haven’t had any of that.”
“But I still battled symptoms the whole time,” Woodland added, noting, “I can’t waste energy anymore hiding this.”
On Sunday, Woodland’s brave vulnerability was on full display when he won the Texas Children’s Houston Open at 3-under par and five shots over second-place Nicolai Hojgaard on the leaderboard.
Woodland started crying after sinking his final putt. The crowd erupted in “Gary” chants, and Woodland looked toward the sky. He hugged his wife, Gaby, and sobbed into her shoulder.
“We play an individual sport out here, but I wasn’t alone today,” Woodland said on the course afterward, per PGA Tour. “I got a lot of people behind me — my team, my family — in this golf world. Anybody that’s struggling with something, I hope they see me and don’t give up. Just keep fighting.”
During his press conference, Woodland expounded on that sentiment.
“Everybody’s battling something,” he said. “I’ve told myself the whole time, I wasn’t going to let this thing in my head win. From when I was diagnosed with this thing on my brain, the whole thing was, I wasn’t going to let it win. Today was evidence of that.”
Woodland’s Houston Open triumph marked his first PGA Tour win since becoming a U.S. Open champion in 2019. His other PGA Tour wins came in the 2011 Transitions Championship, 2013 Reno-Tahoe Open, and 2018 Waste Management Phoenix Open.
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