At first, there was mostly silence. After all, Gary Woodland was on the tee, and the protocol is to be quiet.
Then he hit.
And there was mostly silence again on Sunday from those around the 9th tee box at Bellerive Country Club. You can’t blame them. It’s not every day you see a U.S. Open winner execute the go-to shot of a bogey golfer:
Said analyst Colt Knost: “He’s from Topeka, Kansas. They call it Top City.”
At that point during the final round of the BMW Championship, Woodland was a stroke out of the lead. From there, he dropped by the water, made a double-bogey six on the hole and finished tied for fourth. And that was that. No one asked Woodland about it.
Not quite.
After the round, the top was a topic for a reporter. What happened? Woodland laughed. He said he didn’t know.
“My coach, Randy [Smith], calls it an oops,” Woodland said. “I think I was trying to get on top of it, trying to hit it a little low. I had been hitting it nice. But I was shocked more than anything. I told my caddie, I think I just topped that into the water. But I’m proud of myself for rebounding because I could have let it get away pretty good. It shocked me more than anything. I haven’t done that in a long, long time.”
So how do you do that, though?
“I don’t know,” Woodland said. “I really don’t. Obviously got a little off. I’m proud of myself for not letting it get away. Because after that shot I could have, for how shocked I was, it could have got away from me pretty quick and I battled and ended up pretty good.”
And that was that. No one needled him about it.
Sure.
Three days after the top, Woodland sat for his pre-tournament press conference for this week’s Tour Championship, where a reporter wondered if he’d heard any grief. Woodland said he had. It seems as if the list of those who hadn’t jabbed him was sizably shorter than the ledger of those who had. “I’ve hit some good shots this year, and I haven’t got any attention — or as much attention as that shot has,” Woodland said. “That one, it caught me off guard too, more than anything. I hadn’t really missed a shot for eight holes, and then that came out of nowhere.” Tuesday night, during an award ceremony, one shot came from U.S. Presidents Cup captain Brandt Snedeker, who’d been asked if Woodland was in contention to be a captain’s pick for the event.
“He was congratulating me on my win [earlier this year] and how I’ve been playing,” Woodland said, “and [he said] I played great last week minus the shot I hit on the 9th hole on Sunday.”
There have also been texts, plural.
Including one from his dad, Dan, whose message was waiting after his son finished the round. To note here, a year ago, the Woodlands had played in the PNC Championship, a scramble event that pairs together major winners with a relative, and this year, they plan to play again.
“My dad and I will play in the PNC again this year, the father and son, and when I turned my phone on after the round, it wasn’t ‘congrats’ or ‘good playing,’” Woodland said.
“It was, ‘Hey, get that shot out of the way. I can’t afford to have that in the scramble.’”
Mr. Woodland’s line had hit the sweet spot.
Unlike his son’s golf ball.
“It’s been — I don’t think I’ll live that one down for a while,” the younger Woodland said Wednesday. “I think that one’s going to stick around for a while. I’m proud of myself for how I rebounded after that. It shocked me so much. I think I could have let everything get away. I rebounded and hung in there pretty well and let that one shot go.
“Because at the end of the day, it was just one shot.”
