AUGUSTA, Ga. — Seven months ago, Gary Woodland was in a hospital recovering from surgery to remove a tumor from his brain. Wednesday, he nearly carded back-to-back holes-in-one during the Par 3 Contest at Augusta National.
With his wife and three kids looking on, Woodland played the slope of the green perfectly at No. 6, launching his tee shot beyond the hole, then letting gravity do its thing:
It was Woodland’s first hole-in-one during the Par 3 Contest, an annual Wednesday tradition at Augusta National before the start of the Masters on Thursday.
A few minutes later, Woodland nearly did it again, only to have his tee shot lip out.
That Woodland, the 2019 U.S. Open winner, is even at Augusta National for this week’s Masters is a feel-good story in and of itself. Last April, he started showing symptoms that something wasn’t quite right. He started experiencing tremors, chills and had trouble sleeping. An MRI would eventually show a tumor in his brain.
He continued to play, before opting to have surgery in September. According to The Associated Press, doctors drilled a hole in his skull the size of a baseball. The removed tumor proved to be benign. In January, he returned to the course where he missed the cut at the Sony Open in Hawaii.
His results since have been mixed, with four more missed cuts mixed in with a trio of finishes outside the top 20.
Regardless, he’s here, at Augusta, with a golf club in his hand and now his first hole-in-one on the famed Par 3 course.
“Obviously it’s been a journey,” the 39-year-old Woodland said Tuesday of his recovery. “It’s been a process for the last year. But there’s nowhere I’d rather be right now.”
