‘I think I’m dying again’: U.S. Open champion opens up on difficult year

TGL? Him? Gary Woodland laughs at the suggestion of playing in the league brimming with bells and whistles and hammers and clocks. Simulator golf is stimulator golf, and he has to be mindful of such things. 

But then he answers. 

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

Prepared. Woodland’s used that word plenty, it feels like. 

This week, the 2019 U.S. Open winner is playing the PGA Tour’s Sony Open, and it’s a milestone of sorts. One year back. Last January, he returned at the Sony, about four months after he underwent surgery on a brain lesion that he was diagnosed with in the spring of 2023. He hadn’t been prepared for the period before the procedure. How could he be? At times, as the lesion prowled on the part of his brain that controls fear, he said he suffered from thoughts of death. 

Nor was he prepared for last year. 

How could he be? 

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

“Last year was one of the hardest years of my life from the standpoint everything was new,” Woodland said Wednesday. “I was very thankful to be back in this seat last year less than four months from surgery, but everything was new. It was like I was a rookie again. I didn’t know what to expect. There were days waking up I didn’t know if I was going to feel good. 

“I didn’t know how I was going to be, going back to places where the year before — talk about PTSD, I’m driving through places where, yeah, I pulled over there and had to call my wife crying because I thought I was going to die. I come back to a hotel, I’m like, I had multiple seizures in this bed. Everything was new, and it was hard.”

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

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“Rock bottom,” he said, came at the end of July at the 3M Open. He’d played three-straight weeks, including overseas, to Scotland for the Open Championship. Friday at the 3M, he started not to feel well. Saturday, he sank. 

“I left the golf course in tears, called my wife and I said, I think I’m dying again; it’s all back,” Woodland said. “We went home, I was on the internet all night. I reached out to my doctors. We sat down and started realizing that the scans are stable, this thing hasn’t grown, it hasn’t changed. 

“We need ways to slow the brain down.”

More processes were employed. “We’ve came up with some stuff,” he said. Medication. Knowing when to shut down. Breathing exercises — once in the morning, once at night, for about an hour total. He had to rewire himself to understand fully that it was the lesion causing him the feelings of fear and anxiety. “Now the days of me getting up in the morning and getting out of bed and just going about my life, those are over. The days of me just jumping in bed and going to sleep, that’s not how it works 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 multiple weeks in a row now, I’m going to have to do more of it to give myself the stamina in my brain to be prepared for the stimulation. When I got overstimulated is when I shut down. I didn’t understand that last year. I was blaming a lot of it on the medicine. Well, I’m on the medicine indefinitely now I’ve found out.”

Woodland said he believes he’s progressing. 

Interestingly, he said, the breathing work has made him a better player; it’s slowed his heart rate down. He’s been able to be around his family more, too. “Over the last couple months, I’m starting 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 3M], which I don’t think I’ve ever told myself — I won the U.S. 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, to take a year, to take a medical, and from a results standpoint, that was probably the thing to do. But I wouldn’t be sitting here today as optimistic because I know what it takes now for me to feel well. I know what I have to do if I’m going to play multiple weeks in a row. I know the work I have to put in to get myself in that situation. 

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“I wouldn’t have known that 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 that’s not what I signed up for. That’s not what my sponsors and everybody has signed up for.”

He said he now feels more prepared. 

There’s that word again.  

“I’m as optimistic about my golf game,” Woodland said, “as I’ve been since I won the U.S. 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 down. Being back with Randy [Smith, his coach], I’m starting to see signs that I haven’t seen in the golf game for a long time.

“I think from a golf standpoint 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. The confidence is coming. But I know my game is in a better spot, and that’s exciting.”