{"id":433410,"date":"2025-02-27T17:24:39","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T22:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/?p=433410"},"modified":"2025-04-23T16:39:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T16:39:16","slug":"gary-woodland-recieves-courage-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/gary-woodland-recieves-courage-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Woodland Receives Major PGA Tour Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">On February 26, 2025, Gary Woodland received the PGA Tour Courage Award during a presentation at the Cognizant Classic ahead of the tournament.\u00a0 This surprised Woodland, who graciously accepted the award while tearing up during his acceptance speech.\u00a0 This award has only ever been given out seven times since it was established in 2012.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Why Did Gary Woodland Receive PGA Tour Courage Award<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This award came to Woodland due to his struggles with a surgery he went through in September of 2023.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not uncommon for players to be injured or need surgery, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2023\/03\/13\/its-scottie-scheffler-golf-world-were-just-living-in-it\/\" target=\"_self\">Scottie Scheffler<\/a> is having issues with his <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/2025\/01\/23\/scottie-scheffler-hand-costing-millions\/\" target=\"_self\">hand<\/a>.\u00a0 Gary Woodland however had to have open brain surgery.\u00a0 The surgery was for a brain lesion he contracted earlier that year.\u00a0 He ended up struggling with the symptoms during the 2024 season.\u00a0 Starting in the Hawaii Sony Open in January, it was a hard journey to get back in the game.\u00a0 Anyone who has gone through any kind of surgery will understand that symptoms and pains tend to stick around for months afterward even when one has technically recovered.\u00a0 Woodland was playing while his head was still healing.\u00a0 His recovery and resolve have been called nothing short of miraculous and inspiring.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>WATCH: Gary Woodland Tears-up At Acceptance Speech<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Emotional Gary Woodland in tears as he receives PGA Tour Courage Award\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RKdOl7gnnSY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Happened To Gary Woodland?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gary Woodland contracted a brain lesion in 2023 that left him in tremendous pain.\u00a0 He has described it as feeling like he \u201cwas going to die,\u201d the pain was that bad.\u00a0 \u00a0Woodland did still try to play until his caddie Brennan Little told him that he could not play like this.\u00a0 He went to a specialist and was put on seizure medicine to control the symptoms.\u00a0 On September 18th, 2023, he underwent surgery to get the lesion removed.\u00a0 The wound itself was about the size of a baseball.\u00a0 The risks included the possibility of paralysis on the left side of his body.\u00a0 He was left in the ICU for two days during his initial recovery and refused to leave in a wheelchair.\u00a0 Recovery from a surgery like this can easily last several months.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During this time, as soon as the doctors allowed Woodland to play lightly, he insisted on getting back into shape so that he can play professionally.\u00a0 This is what he was dealing with going into the 2024 season.\u00a0 He has called his recovery a \u201cdifficult journey.&#8221;\u00a0 He has said that the award more belongs to the people around him who helped and encouraged him to keep going.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Going Forward For Woodland<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This award is just a little bit overdue, considering that the surgery was almost two years ago, and his recovery time was one year ago, but he is not complaining.\u00a0 Gary Woodland himself seems to be more concerned about his ability to play rather than the award given his attitude regarding the recovery.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main photo credit: \u00a9 Jeff Romance \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On February 26, 2025, Gary Woodland received the PGA Tour Courage Award during a presentation at the Cognizant Classic ahead of the tournament.\u00a0 This surprised Woodland, who graciously accepted the award while tearing up during his acceptance speech.\u00a0 This award has only ever been given out seven times since it was established in 2012.\u00a0\u00a0 Why [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4860,"featured_media":433420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,246,19],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-433410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-golf-news","category-pga","tag-gary-woodland"],"modified_by":"yobodev","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}