SCOTTSDALE, AZ — Household names Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, and two-time defending champ Scottie Scheffler are all back in action at a rain-soaked TPC Scottsdale. So is Gary Woodland, but his return has a far greater personal meaning after what he’s been through the past 10 months.
From his win in 2018 to the incredible scene with Amy Bockerstette on the 16th hole a year later, Woodland has brought a lot of smiles to this tournament over the years.
But his smile disappeared in the late spring of last year.
"I'm a very optimistic person, [I] believe good things will happen. And I was very fear-driven every day, mostly around death," Woodland said.
It was a couple of weeks after the Masters in April when Woodland began waking up in the middle of the night shaking with partial seizures and a fear that he was dying.
"It didn't matter if I was driving a car or on an airplane, I think the bin's going to fall on me. Just everything I thought was going to kill me," he said. "All you wanted to do was go to sleep, just to not think about it, but going to sleep was the worst part because that's where all the seizures were happening."
Woodland asked his doctor for anxiety medication, but instead got an MRI on May 24, which revealed he had a tumor-like lesion on his brain that sat on the part that controlled fear and anxiety.
"The hardest part for me is I wasn't myself. That's probably the hardest part for my family as well. I'm 39 years old, [and] to live a life one way and then all of a sudden, you're not yourself. You have no control."
For 10 weeks, Woodland played through symptoms. Eight of the weeks he was on medication for the seizures, which left him so tired that he couldn’t stay awake past 9 a.m. without an energy pill.
Finally, in September, he underwent a craniotomy. A baseball-sized chunk of his skull was taken out to remove as much of the affected area of his brain as they could.
"When I woke up and realized I was OK, I was filled with thankfulness and love that replaced the fear. It was emotional, very emotional, because I'd gone four and a half months of every day really thinking I was going to die."
There’s finally a light at the end of this long process for Woodland and his family.
The seizures have stopped, his energy is back, and he says he’s finally starting to feel like himself again — his major-champion self, as this week marks his third tournament back on Tour.
"I want to prove to my kids that nobody's going to tell you that you can't do anything. You can overcome even some of the toughest, scariest decisions and things in your life. Not everything's easy. This came out of nowhere for me, but I'm not going to let it stop me. I don't want this to be a bump in the road for me. I want it to be a jumpstart in my career," Woodland said. "At the end of the day, I'm here because I believe this is what I've been born to do, is to play great golf. And I want to do that again."
