Professional Golfer Gary Woodland Was "Very Fear-Driven" During Battle with Brain Lesion

Professional golfer Gary Woodland has faced enormous challenges in recent years, but his courage has been nothing short of inspiring. After battling serious health issues, including undergoing brain surgery, he's continued to push forward, working tirelessly to regain his stellar form on the golf course.

Now, it's been a few years since Gary's surgery, so how is he doing now? Here's an update on his health and the reasons behind his surgery.

As of March 2025, Gary Woodland is still actively managing his health and working toward rediscovering his form before his brain surgery. While the surgery itself was deemed a success, Gary continues to deal with some lingering obstacles.

Overall, Gary's health is stable, and he and his wife, Gabby, have been exploring various solutions to help him manage his condition while staying on the PGA Tour. To combat issues like overstimulation and headaches, Gary has found relief through breathing techniques and medication.

"At the end of the day, I'm fighting," Gary said in February 2025 at the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches after receiving the PGA Tour's Courage Award. "The last thing I'm going to let this do is let this thing in my head stop my dreams, and that's why I fight every day. I want to be there for my kids and my family, but I want to chase my dreams, too. I've got a lot of dreams out here."

Gary added, "I'm starting to understand what I need to do every day to function in life, but the things I'm doing to help with my brain are also helping me play golf, and I'm knocking on the door. I know my game is close. It's coming, and I'm going to keep knocking on that door until I bust through, and then we'll see what happens."

On Aug. 30, 2023, Gary Woodland took to social media and announced to the public that he had been diagnosed with a brain lesion. He revealed that he was diagnosed a few months earlier and had been "trying to treat symptoms with medication."

However, after consulting with several specialists and discussing the situation with his family, they all agreed that surgery to remove the lesion was the best option.

Gary underwent a "long surgery" on Sept. 18, 2023, according to a post on his X (formerly Twitter) account. The post confirmed that the "majority of the tumor" had been removed, and Gary was officially on the road to recovery.

Since then, Gary has been candid about the frightening experience. In an interview with The Associated Press in January 2024, the athlete disclosed that in April 2023, he began experiencing symptoms like sudden fear, hand tremors, chills, and low energy.

When he asked his doctor for something to help with his anxiety, an MRI was ordered to rule out Parkinson's disease. Instead, it showed the lesion, which was located on a part of his brain that controlled fear.

"That was the one that scared me the most," Gary said about his symptoms. "I'm a very optimistic person. I believe good things will happen. I was very fear-driven every day, mostly around death."

Despite these challenges, Gary played in 10 tournaments while dealing with the symptoms, competing in eight events while on medication and seven after receiving his diagnosis. Remarkably, he made the cut in eight of those 10 tournaments.

Although the surgery didn't remove all of the tumor, and there was a risk of losing vision on his left side or impairing the use of his left side, it was considered successful in other respects, particularly because the tumor was benign.

"It was very emotional because I had gone four-and-a-half months of every day really thinking I was going to die," Gary admitted. "The doctors kept telling me I was OK, but this thing pushing on my brain ... didn't matter if I was driving a car, on an airplane, I thought everything was going to kill me. You can imagine leading up to surgery how I felt going into having my head cut open and operated on. The fear going into that was awful."