ATLANTA — Seven years ago, Gary Woodland was the reigning U.S. Open champion and a fixture at East Lake Golf Club.
This week, he had to use GPS for directions.
When a reporter asked him whether he needed help finding the place, Woodland smiled.
“I went the wrong way this morning, so yes,” he said.
The joke was easy. The journey was anything but.
Seven years had passed since Woodland finished in the top 30 of the FedEx Cup standings and qualified for the Tour Championship. A lot had changed in those seven years, including a redesign of the layout that made the course appear foreign to him. But that's not all that had changed.
In September 2023, Woodland, 42, underwent surgery to remove a baseball-sized tumor from his brain. Before the operation, he wrote
letters to each of his three kids in case he didn’t make it. Making it to East Lake? It has been the least of his concerns.
Woodland rolled into the parking lot Monday in his courtesy car after a season that has once seemed almost impossible to imagine. He won the Texas Children’s Houston Open in March, recorded six top-10 finishes and then delivered a clutch T-4 finish at the BMW Championship last week to secure a spot in Atlanta.
“It's something that looked a long ways away to start the year,” he said. “I'm proud of the way I fought. I'm proud to be here.”
Woodland’s battle didn’t end when he left the operating room. After the brain surgery came another fight, a silent battle that was harder to explain because it couldn’t be seen on an MRI. In March, just weeks before his victory, Woodland revealed he was battling post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Something remarkable happened when he went public with his latest fight.
“When it came out that I was having brain surgery, I don't know how many texts I got. Let's just say I got a hundred,” he said. “When I came out that I'm battling PTSD, I got thousands.”
People could understand the brain surgery from a distance. But they understood his invisible battle because they were fighting their own battles, too. Woodland began receiving messages from strangers that were struggling with things they hadn't been able to tell another soul. Some thanked him for being willing to say out loud what they were experiencing themselves.
“If I can come out and ask for help and talk about it, then they've gotten help too,” Woodland said.
And that led to an important realization: he wasn’t playing just for himself anymore.
Asking for help has been one of the hardest things he had ever done. What he discovered on the other side was almost the opposite of what he feared.
“It’s amazing when you ask for help how many people actually want to help,” he said.
Woodland traded worries for a win, and here he is. But nothing about his comeback has been neat, where everything is suddenly fine. His best days are 10s, and he appreciates them more. But the bad days? Still 1s.
“I struggle sometimes because it's a massive drop now from 10 to 1,” he said. “So, when I get off, it feels like the end of the world.”
The 1 days still “suck.” He still has to fight. But he no longer has to pretend otherwise.
“I got a lot of relief from that,” he said. “I still battle the same things now that I was battling then, but I feel the love and support; I don't feel like I'm hiding anything.”
Tommy Fleetwood, one of Woodland’s fellow competitors and the defending FedEx Cup champion, understands what his season represents.
“For him to have a great year,” Fleetwood said, “it's one of those inspirational stories that I'm sure touches so many people but also has an impact on a lot of people as well and their individual journeys.”
Woodland isn’t treating this week as a sentimental victory lap. The Tour Championship’s format has changed since his last appearance — good riddance to the former staggered-start scoring format in which Scottie Scheffler, the FedEx Cup leader before the reset, would have started at 10 under — and now the player in the 30-man field with the lowest 72-hole score wins. Having continually defied the odds, Woodland likes his chances.
“You're spotting Scottie six or seven shots. We have a hard enough time not spotting him any shots,” Woodland said.
Then he made his intentions clear.
“I'm showing up here to win, there's no doubt about it,” he said. “I'm not here as a celebratory tour because I'm finishing top 30. I'm here playing with a purpose.”
That purpose reaches far beyond golf. Just a few weeks ago, during the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, Woodland met an 11-year-old boy from New Zealand with an inoperable brain tumor. From Wednesday through Sunday, he walked every hole with Woodland.
“I owe it to him,” Woodland said.
At first, he thought the fight was about him. Now he knows it isn’t.
“This is way bigger than me,” he said. “I owe it to everyone else that is struggling.”
For Woodland, becoming a professional athlete was the only dream he ever had. Now, continuing to pursue that dream has become an act of defiance.
“There's a lot of days where I don't want to do it,” he said. “There's a lot of days I don't want to fight.”
But he does. Because that kid who dreamed of becoming a professional athlete is still inside of him. Because his family sacrificed for that dream. And because he refuses to let something beyond his control decide how his story ends.
“I'm not going to let this thing beat me,” Woodland said. “I worked my tail off to get to the PGA Tour and to be a professional athlete. I'm not going to let that go for something that's out of my hands.”
The road ahead won’t be easy for golf’s feel-good story of the year. The bad days aren’t yet behind the Comeback Kid. He simply knows there are still good days to come, too.
“I have the ability to get up and fight every day, and I’m going to do that,” he said. “I have a lot of fight left in me.”
Seven years after his last trip to the Tour Championship, Woodland found his way back.
And this time, he didn’t have to find the road alone.
Adam Schupak is a senior writer for Golfweek, covering the PGA Tour.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Still fighting: Gary Woodland returns to Tour Championship after 7-year drought
