One of the PGA Tour’s most endearing and inspiring figures, Woodland won the 2019 US Open at Pebble Beach, his only major and the basic requirement to play in the PNC Championship with a family member.
For five years he waited and hoped for an invitation to play the challenge season event at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, but the call never came.
“We’ve been talking about it for a while. It was nice to get the call,” said Woodland, who will finally play for PNC this week with his father Dan. “This is a special one. I know it’s a major champion deal, so when I won in ’19 I knew we would have a chance. From a health perspective, this is the first year we’ve really been able to do this. It was nice to get that call and be able to do it for sure.”
The invitation to the year-end team event is particularly special after a difficult few seasons for Woodland, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2023 and continues to experience symptoms following surgery.
Getting the opportunity to play professional golf again after his diagnosis was special, but the opportunity to compete alongside his father, who introduced him to golf, is a moment of exhalation after a difficult period.
“My whole life is in perspective now. To be honest, I probably took it for granted that I was here. This is my 17th year here on Tour. You just expect this to happen every year,” Woodland said. “It’s still been a journey, right? I’m still fighting. I’m still grinding. Even for us, my first tournament after surgery was Sony, and I got a call from my mom the Saturday before that my dad had been diagnosed with cancer. So my poor mom has been through it more than either of us and has had to deal with us.”
‘But he rang the doorbell [for being cancer-free] almost a year now, and I’m at a point where I’m still healing, but getting better. This is certainly a special week for both of us, which offers perspective.”
The biggest challenge for the Woodlands this week will likely be expectations, with Dan Woodland admitting that when he received the news that he would be competing in the event with his son, it came with a healthy amount of competitive anxiety.
“Unfortunately, I don’t play much. Gary called me about a month ago, month and a half ago, and I can tell you I’ve hit more golf balls in the last month and a half than I have in the last 25 years,” Dan Woodland said. “So that explains it all. Like I said, I spend a lot of time with my grandchildren, but how can you turn down this opportunity? It’s great.”
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