ST. LOUIS – Before Gary Woodland struck his 54-foot birdie putt at the seventh hole at Bellerive Country Club, he touched his chest with his left hand. It’s something he’s been doing all year, and for good reason.
“When I'm struggling I put my hand on my heart to just to remind myself that I'm alive, and if I can feel my heart beat I know I'm breathing. And I've done that this year just to try to slow my heart down, tell myself I'm safe and I'll be all right,” he said.
Woodland sank that long-range putt and put on a ball-striking clinic, hitting 17 of 18 greens in regulation and holing out for eagle at 11 en route to posting 6-under 64 on Thursday to share the first-round lead at the BMW Championship with Wyndham Clark.
Woodland, 42, is enjoying
his “home game” this week. He grew up 3½ hours away in Topeka, Kansas, but called Bellerive the closest he’s ever gotten to playing at home in his 18-year Tour career. On Thursday, his outfit contained primarily black and gold, the colors of University of Missouri and not the colors of rival University of Kansas, Woodland’s alma mater. Did he dress in the dark?
“All the fans were very nice to me. Being a Kansas boy, the fans were very nice to me. But I'm a Kansan at heart, and I'll represent the blue the rest of the week, for sure,” he said.
It wasn't the first time that Woodland opened with 64 at Bellerive. He did so at the 2018 PGA Championship too, but said he struck the ball better this time and the stats backed him up. He ranked first in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green and SG: Approach. In fact, Woodland gain just over five strokes on the field in approach, the third best approach round of his career out of 1,412 rounds. He hit the first 17 greens in regulation and was bummed to miss at 18, which led to his lone bogey of the round.
Woodland sensed a round like this coming. He worked with swing coach Randy Smith for four days before last week’s tournament in Memphis but the tweaks didn’t click at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Woodland watched the 2018 PGA on YouTube and sent screenshots to Smith of something he wanted to try.
“I just tried to get a little more solid at the top and, man, it allowed me to control the ball really well,” he said.
He canned a 10-foot birdie at the second to get into red figures early and an 11-footer at the fifth. His first long-range bomb was that 54-foot birdie putt at the seventh. After a two-putt birdie at the par-5 eighth from 24 feet, he dialed in his sand wedge from 97 yards, spinning it back in for an eagle deuce.
“I was just trying to get it past the hole. It's a little bit elevated so we couldn't see it go in. So I knew I hit it nice, but when you see the crowd jump up that was definitely a bonus,” Woodland said.
That lifted him to 6 under and he owned a four-stroke lead at one point before Clark birdied five of the last six holes to catch him. Woodland added one final birdie at the 17th, where he whistled a 2-iron on the par-5 in two from 282 yards.
That was the third 64 Woodland has witnessed at Bellerive – two of his own and the other by Tiger Woods in the final round of the 2018 PGA when he fired up the crowd with a classic charge but couldn’t catch Brooks Koepka. Woodland remembers Woods’s round fondly, and said he learned a great deal that day.
“The putt he made on nine was the loudest roar I've heard on a golf course,” Woodland said. “I think my family left halfway through that round, they couldn't see anything the crowds were so big. He put on a show.”
Woodland has been the feel-good story of the year on the Tour, winning the Texas Children's Houston Open in late March for the first win since undergoing surgery to remove a baseball-sized tumor in his brain in September 2023. Only weeks before his victory, Woodland went public that he was experiencing PTSD after his brain surgery.
“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. I have more energy and that's the big deal. I was wasting energy hiding that and I'm not wasting the energy anymore.”
Woodland’s resurgence between the ropes has him battling for a spot in the top 30 and a return to East Lake and the Tour Championship in Atlanta for the first time since 2019, the year he won the U.S. Open. He entered the week at No. 31 in the season-long FedEx Cup standings.
“I'm proud of where I'm at right now,” he said. “I can promise you East Lake wasn't on my mind to start the year. It's a goal, I think you write it down, but it seemed far, far away. The game's just continued to grind.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: The feel-good story of the year rolls on as Gary Woodland shoots 64 at BMW Championship
