Gary Woodland returns to PGA Tour at Sony Open months after brain surgery: 'Nothing is going to stop me'
Woodland underwent surgery to remove a lesion from his brain in September
After months of terrifying symptoms, and several more recovering, Gary Woodland is finally back to his old self.
Woodland is back on the PGA Tour this week at the Sony Open in Hawaii, marking his first event back since he had part of a lesion removed from his brain about four months ago. He shot a 1-over 71 on Thursday in a round that was, for him, "a little more emotional than I thought I was going to be."
“This came out of nowhere for me, but I’m not going to let it stop me,” he said earlier in the week from Waialae Country Club. “I don’t want this to be a bump in the road for me. I want it to be a jump start in my career … At the end of the day, I’m here because I believe this is what I’ve been born to do, play great golf. I want to do that again. It’s been a while. Been a couple of years.
“Nothing is going to stop me. I believe that.”
Woodland spent 'every day thinking I was going to die'
Woodland first realized something was wrong during the Mexico Open at Vidanta last season. On Saturday night during that event, Woodland was suddenly jolted awake.
He wasn’t sure what was wrong or why he was woken up, but fear set in almost immediately.
That continued over the next several months. A few weeks later, during the Memorial Tournament, Woodland was suddenly jolted awake again. Woodland, who already had a fear of heights, had a nightmare that he was falling.
“I'm laying in bed at 1 a.m. grabbing the bed to tell myself I wasn't falling from heights, I wasn't dying, for an hour,” Woodland said.
The fear and anxiety continued almost every day, mostly when it came to death. Sleeping didn’t help either due to the little seizures he was experiencing at night.
“It came out of nowhere. This was a new experience for me,” Woodland said. “Being an optimistic person, taking that away and everything is death, everything from driving a car to getting on an airplane, which we're traveling for a living. Coming home, seeing my kids do something, [thinking], ‘Oh, something bad is gonna happen to them.’
“It was a horrible experience. All you wanted to do was go to sleep to not think about it, and going to sleep was the worst part. That is where all the seizures were happening. It was a horrible four, five months.”
There were other symptoms, too. His hands would shake, he’d lose his appetite, he’d get chills. Sometimes he would be standing over a shot on the golf course, and suddenly forget what club he was hitting or completely lose his patience.
Finally, when the symptoms became too much, Woodland was begging doctors for something to calm his anxiety and shaking down. That’s when he went in for an MRI, and doctors found the lesion.
Lesions are spots on the brain that can indicate injured or damaged tissue. They can cause significant problems, depending on where they are located. According to the Cleveland Clinic, for example, lesions on the parietal lobe can lead to numbness, the inability to write or do math, confusion of left and right and more. That’s why with Woodland, based on where his was located, his anxiety and fear were impacted.
That, he said, was actually a huge relief. The issue was treatable.
Throughout all of that, Woodland kept competing. He was happy with how his game was progressing, first of all, but more importantly it was a huge distraction for him. Yet once he left the course, his symptoms would pick back up. His wife, Gabby, frequently flew out to tournaments on the weekends simply so he didn’t have to sleep alone.
“Golf was the only thing that was [allowing] me a little break for a little bit of time,” he said. “I didn’t have the energy to do it seven days a week, but it did give me a little bit of a break.”
But finally, with the medicine not working well enough, doctors told Woodland that they had to go in and perform surgery. Woodland underwent successful surgery in September, and a “majority” of the lesion was removed. He said Tuesday that doctors told him they didn’t think it was possible to remove the entire lesion based on where it was located on his brain. If they went too far, he could have lost eyesight or the ability to move the left side of his body.
Woodland said the size of the lesion “wasn’t massive,” but it was growing. Doctors aren’t sure how long it was there before they caught it, either.
The fear was gone immediately after the surgery.
“When I woke up and realized I was OK, I was filled with thankfulness and love,” Woodland said. “That replaced the fear. It was emotional, very emotional, because I had gone four and a half months, every day thinking I was going to die.”
Woodland has won four times in his career on the PGA Tour, including at the 2019 U.S. Open. The 39-year-old had two top-10 finishes last season, and finished T14 at the Masters in April, but he failed to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs. Woodland will enter this week at No. 94 in the Official World Golf Rankings.
What happens on the course this week isn’t that big of a deal. The fact that Woodland is competing again just about four months after brain surgery already makes it a successful outing. While he knows it’s going to take a bit to get back into the rhythm of things, and he’s going to have to take it slow, Woodland wants to play as normal of a season as he can.
“I plan on being competitive very quickly,” he said. “Like I said, physically I can hit any shot I want. That's not going to be the problem. I am looking forward to being back and where I'm at and expecting to be ready very soon.”
