A heartwarming story of perseverance

Popular PGA Tour golfer Gary Woodland’s win at the Texas Children's Houston Open on March 29 exemplified perseverance in golf and life. It was Woodland’s first win since his 2019 win at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, six years, nine months and 13 days earlier.

Woodland underwent a craniotomy in the fall of 2023 during which doctors removed a benign lesion from his brain through a baseball-sized hole in his skull. The after-effects of the lesion removal left Woodland with serious anxiety and panic attacks. It caused him to have fears he was dying, affected his sleep and made him hypervigilant (a state of heightened alertness for threat and danger though none exists) every time he was on the golf course.

He was diagnosed with PTSD. It turns out that the tumor was pressing against the part of his brain that controls the fear response.  On March 10 he did a live interview on the Golf Channel in which he emotionally explained how he tried to make it seem like he was back to normal after the surgery, but he admitted he was “living a lie.” He was suffering.

That interview, he shared, was a load off his back. He was apparently so freed-up that, in Houston, he dominated from the first hole to the last.

Perseverance is defined as personally pursuing your goal with steadfast intenseness in spite of difficulties. Many people find it impossible to continue in the face of apparently insurmountable troubles. Others accept the challenge to keep going.

It may have to do with upbringing, parental training, examples early in life and personality traits. Where golf is concerned, the most amazing story in my opinion is Ben Hogan. Hogan and his wife, Vaerie, were returning from a tournament in Phoenix in their new Cadillac, when they proceeded over a fog-shrouded narrow bridge near Van Horn, Texas, and collided head-on with a Greyhound bus trying to pass a car.

Hogan threw himself across the front seat, saving both his and Valerie’s lives. He suffered a fractured collar bone, fractured pelvis, fractured rib, broken left ankle, internal injuries, and near-fatal blood clots. He spent a couple of months in the hospital in El Paso before returning by train to Ft. Worth.

Hogan spent nearly all of 1949 recovering from his injuries before returning to his legendary golf practice routine. Remarkably back in form, he won the 1950 U.S. Open, known as the “miracle at Merion.” But his biggest year was 1953 when he won the Masters, the U.S. Open and the Open Championship (aka British Open). Hogan truly was persistence and perseverance personified.

A more recent example of perseverance is PGA Tour player Bud Cauley, who also was in a life-threatening car crash in 2018 that left him with five broken ribs, a broken left leg and a collapsed lung. After being out of golf for four years, Cauley returned to golf like the accident never happened. In 2025 he placed sixth at the Player’s Championship and finished in the top 50 on the season-ending points list. Cauley’s perseverance was recognized by the Golf Writers Association of America with the Ben Hogan Award, a PGA Tour honor that dates to 1954.

Another golf award with a similar flavor is the LPGA’s Heather Farr Perseverance Award established in 1994 in honor of the LPGA player who died in 1993 following a long battle with breast cancer. The award recognizes the recipient for “hard work, dedication and love for the game of golf with demonstrated determination, perseverance and spirit in fulfilling her goals as a player.”

The following is a poignant postscript to the Gary Woodland story: “We play an individual game out there,” Woodland said, “but I wasn’t alone today.”