ST. LOUIS — Gary Woodland has strong memories of Bellerive, the closest tournament to his Kansas home. He led the 2018 PGA Championship after 18 and 36 holes and started the final round two shots out of the lead, his first Sunday in a major playing alongside Tiger Woods.
“I’d never seen anything like that,” Woodland said. “It was ruckus. It was awesome. I was watching him and got caught up in him.” Woodland is convinced that experience is what enabled him to win the U.S. Open the following year at Pebble Beach, which stands as the biggest moment of his career.
Biggest. Most memorable. But no longer his proudest moment.
That would be this year, among his toughest seasons as he tries to recover from brain surgery that removed part — but not all — of a lesion that triggered unfounded fears of dying. He still gets spooked by sudden movement, such as the walking scorer approaching from behind or a lone golf cart in the distance he sees out of the corner of his eye.
Drones are a problem.
“I need to be a no-fly zone,” Woodland said with a laugh.
“Any cart moving, even though it’s not in play, that never used to bother me. Now I have to back away because my brain wants to make sure that’s not a threat coming to get me. And that’s hard when you’re competing.” He gave an emotional interview with Golf Channel in March to discuss post-traumatic stress disorder so severe there have been times when he would be in tears in the middle of the fairway.
This is what Woodland has been dealing with since doctors cut a baseball-sized hole in the side of his head in September 2023 to remove the lesion.