Gary Woodland wins GWAA Ben Hogan Award

Gary Woodland, who underwent a craniotomy last September to remove a brain lesion, is the winner of the Golf Writers Association of America’s 2023 Ben Hogan Award for remaining active in golf “despite a physical handicap or serious illness,” the GWAA announced Monday.

Woodland said he began feeling symptoms at the Mexico Open at Vidanta last May. He started waking up with a jolt – small seizures – and having thoughts of death. He was nauseous the week of the PGA Championship in May, and his doctor ordered an MRI, which revealed the lesion.

He went on medication and was advised to wait and see regarding surgery, but with symptoms worsening, it seemed that the lesion might be growing. It was time to operate.

“They cut me open all the way down to my ear,” he said at the Sony Open in Hawaii, his return to competition in January (missed cut). “Cut about a baseball-sized hole in my skull and went in through that and then put it back with plates and screws.”

For four and a half months, he said at the Sony, he had thought he was going to die. But now doctors told him they’d gotten most of the lesion, and that it was benign. At 39, the winner of four PGA TOUR titles, including the 2019 U.S. Open, had a new lease on life.

After missing his first three cuts to start this season, Woodland was paired with friend Tiger Woods at The Genesis Invitational at The Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. Playing with Woods, who’d given him a sponsor exemption into the Signature Event, helped Woodland find a focus that had been missing, he said. He made the cut and finished T39.

“It's been a little bit harder than I thought,” he said, “but it's coming.”

Sometimes he wants to practice, but his team shuts him down. Well, mostly they do – he hit a shot into a net in his backyard two weeks after surgery.

“I almost fell over, but I hit it,” he said.

Sometimes, he added, he needs to just go into a dark room to avoid over-stimulation. Athletes in other sports know it as post-concussion protocol.

After his slow start this season, he and Butch Harmon looked at videos and realized he was swaying but not rotating, and Woodland rectified that at Riviera.

“What Gary has gone through and what his whole family has gone through is scary, right?” said Woods. “I just thought it was so important for him to be out here with us. It couldn’t have been any better with the group. JT (Justin Thomas) gave him a lot of grief, I gave him a lot of grief, they gave me a lot of grief. It was great interaction and it’s great to have Gary out here playing.”