Former Ryder Cupper reveals journey to escape ‘the wilderness’

I love a good email subject line, and this one was loaded. “Former Ryder Cup Star Wood set for return from wilderness …”

Better believe that got my click. 

The “Wood” we were talking about was, of course, Chris Wood, 2016 Ryder Cupper, 36-year-old Englishman. Maybe you remember him, but if you don’t, well, the “wilderness” bit made sense, too. I hadn’t thought about him in a long time. He is ranked 1,535th in the world. But this wasn’t your standard golf wilderness

“I was diagnosed with chronic anxiety and burnout,” Wood said in the email. “I’ve been through a really rubbish time over the last few years where my golf has really impacted me mentally.  

“I’ve actually been like that since 2019 but it took maybe four years before I did anything about it. It took literally bottoming out to stop, and I didn’t play at all last year. I took a whole year off, and this year has been about trying to get a card in my hand again.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. Wood went a full 52 weeks without competing in a sanctioned tournament. That’s a hard reset. 

Part of my surprise with this info comes from how it was delivered: via press release from the Asian Tour’s International Series, which has gifted Wood two consecutive weeks of exemptions in Thailand. Press releases are almost always fluff. An acknowledgement that a tournament is happening, that a course is opening, that a player has signed with a new clothing sponsor. The quotes you see in press releases are often written by communications staffers, or player managers, with formal language and unrealistic excitement. They rave about the brands they’re associating with and share excitement for what is to come. This was so obviously not that. This had weight to it.

“It’s still very, very hard,” Wood continued, “but I’m still doing it because I want to, and because I feel like I’ve got so much more to offer. I know the quality of shots I’ve got and I can hit, so that’s why I’m still in it.”

That man’s highs have been very, very high. Wood made the European Ryder Cup team in 2016 and, while they were thumped by the Americans, he 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 premier event on the DP World Tour. 

At some point in late 2018 or early 2019, flaws in his swing started to show themselves more often. 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, telling Digest, “I had had enough. I couldn’t take any more really.”

But he hadn’t bottomed out yet. Wood made just two cuts in the shortened season of 2020. He made eight cuts in 22 tries in 2021, and then he had made just one cut in 11 events at the time of the 2022 Scottish Open, where I came across him in the clubhouse. 

I was caddying for Joel Dahmen that week and needed a ride from Renaissance Club, 45 minutes back to Edinburgh. Like most loopers, I was staying in the much cheaper hotel back in Scotland’s capital. Only a handful of players were staying there, too, but Chris was one of them. He overheard me asking one of the concierge staffers if I could bum a ride and went out of his way to invite me in his ride, a players-only Genesis shuttle.  

We chatted about a lot that car ride, and on serious matters — his favorite football club, Manchester United, plus policies on gun control in America vs. Scotland. We parted ways once our driver reached the hotel, Chris having smartly placed a dinner order for pickup while we drove. That night’s meal for Chris was as modest as they get for 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 email inbox, still dreaming, on the other side of an extremely painful 2023. He made the cut in Thailand Friday, posting a second-consecutive 69. He’s had a string of made cuts on the Challenge Tour this summer, the circuit that plays beneath the DP World Tour. He’s bound to play there again next year. But for now, it’s finishing this week’s event and hoping to star in next week’s, too. The journey continues.

His final words, from what is now the best press release I’ve ever received:

“Ten years ago if you had said to me, you will be in this position mentally, I was so unaware of what those words meant, and it takes going through something like this, or someone very close to you going through it, before you can appreciate what those struggles are actually like.

“It’s hard because I still believe I’ve even got a Ryder Cup in me, I truly believe that, and I wouldn’t still be putting myself in positions where I feel anxious and exposed unless I felt like it’s going to be worth it.”