PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – For a man accustomed to comebacks, Tiger Woods knew an inspiring one when he saw it. It’s why he gifted Gary Woodland a sponsor exemption into this $20 million event at Riviera, hoping to jump-start a career that appeared in peril.
Woodland revealed last summer that he was undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor, but that was merely the abridged version. In reality, few knew the inner torment that he’d experienced for the past few months. The tremors. The irritability. The fits of terror. A lesion on his brain was pushing on the part that controlled fear and anxiety, so almost every night, he’d be jolted awake with a crippling worry that he was dying. So racked with fear, Woodland had his wife fly into events to be with him on weekends.
Medication helped subdue some of his symptoms inside the ropes, but Woodland’s focus and energy levels fluctuated and made it difficult for him to compete. At the end of the regular season, his caddie implored him to get help. Doctors performed the risky surgery to remove the lesion last August, making a baseball-sized incision in his skull.
Woodland began stroking putts two days after the procedure, sneaked into his backyard to chip around and went five weeks before swinging a club. The fall was filled with milestones, as each month he began to feel more and more like himself. Seeing improvement, he began eyeing a comeback to the Tour at the start of the new year.
“We haven’t had enough conversation about what he’s gone through and how difficult life was for Gary,” Woods said earlier this week. “To come back and play the Tour, that’s an unbelievable story. I think that we should applaud him for what he’s been able to overcome.”
And it’s why Thursday at the Genesis Invitational was an important step for Woodland. A late three-putt spoiled what was an otherwise solid round of 1-under 70, but he walked off the course thrilled with his progress in this nascent comeback.
“It was the best day I had all year,” he said.
Indeed, it hasn’t been the smoothest comeback.
When he made his return at the Sony Open, Woodland described with stunning clarity his harrowing journey to that point. Many of his peers were shocked to hear the depths that he’d reached just a few months earlier, and the outpouring of support from his colleagues, Tour officials and fans was so immense that it almost became a distraction.
His game wasn’t as sharp as he’d hoped, and he missed the cut at Waialae and Torrey Pines. His body wasn’t moving as well as he tried to rediscover his old patterns. And even after surgery, his mind was still cloudy.
“I had a rough off-week after Torrey Pines,” he said. “Very irritable. Moody. Just not all there, really.”
Woodland desperately wanted to keep working on his game, to claw his way back, but his team shut down that idea. Instead, he went into concussion protocol at home: lights off, no noise, zero stimulation.
“I just didn’t feel like myself again,” he said, “which is frustrating.”
Still, Woodland headed back out on Tour the following week, to the most overstimulated event on the schedule. But two days before the start of the WM Phoenix Open, at his caddie’s behest, he left the course early and returned to the dark room. He shot a miserable 79 in the opening round.
Following another missed cut, Woodland stayed an extra day in Phoenix, not to work but to reset. He sent swing videos to coach Butch Harmon and talked through some of his technical issues, like why he was swaying instead of turning properly.
Always a fierce competitor oozing with alpha energy, the 39-year-old has tried to give himself grace and time throughout this process. He’d tell himself: It’s a long season, and you’re still recovering. But there soon was an urgency attached to his performance; not only did Woods grant Woodland an exemption into Riviera, but he was also grouped with him and Justin Thomas over the first two rounds.
And in that featured group, under the brightest spotlight of the Tour season so far … Woodland outplayed ’em all. He opened up with three consecutive birdies to set the tone, and even though he gave away some shots down the stretch – including a double bogey on the 12th hole and a three-putt from 5 feet on 17 – Woodland thought he played “beautifully.”
“A lot to build on,” he said.
Unlike an ACL tear or wrist tendinitis, there isn’t a set timetable for this recovery. He’s still taking medication. He’s still dealing with MRI exams. He’s still in recovery mode.
It’s an uncomfortable, unsettling reality, his condition so fluid. But he’s determined to work through it.
“I struggled for a long time and figured out why I was struggling and what was going on, and I figured, OK, now I’ll play great golf again,” he said. “It’s been a little bit harder than I thought, but it’s coming.
“Today was a big step in the right direction.”
