Of all the winners around the golfing globe at the weekend there was one very familiar name at the top of one leaderboard.
On the HotelPlanner (Challenge) Tour Chris Wood secured his first victory on the tour and it was as popular as any of his eight wins as a pro. There have been some very dark times in recent years for the hugely likeable Bristolian but now he’s back on our radar.
It’s often forgotten that Wood could very easily have won the 2009 Open at Turnberry. The record books show Stewart Cink painfully eclipsing Tom Watson but the Englishman very nearly did his version of the unthinkable in his rookie season.
Wood, who had only turned pro the previous year following his T5 at Royal Birkdale, came to the 72nd hole on -2, the eventual score set by Cink and Watson who were half a dozen holes behind. Watson famously saw his 8-iron from 187 yards skid through Turnberry’s final green, Wood pitched his 9-iron on the front from 210 and finished in an even worse spot.
Unlike Watson he hit a beautiful 15-foot par putt but it didn’t turn quite enough and he would finish alongside Lee Westwood in a tie for third.
There would be three wins on the DP World Tour, the third at Wentworth helping him play his way onto the 2016 Ryder Cup team. He would get as high as 22nd in the world but already he was feeling like his swing was getting weaker.
Whereas he would thrive in gusty conditions, like those two Open efforts, things were now slowly beginning to unravel.
“I had a year of playing my best golf but I just felt it started to drift towards the end of 2016. I always thought I would only move up the leaderboard in the wind because I had an ability to hit a good ball flight and it deteriorated a little bit from there.
“I felt like I needed to improve that situation but for two or three years I just stayed where I was with the odd feel that worked. I saw a bit of progress but looking back they were more like plasters,” he explained on a Tour blog.
“In 2019 I was working with my coach and I started to develop some severely wide shots, particularly with my driver, to the point where I didn’t carry a driver at Wentworth at the BMW PGA Championship in 2019, just three years after I’d won it, that’s how quickly it got from one point to another.”
And, as his swing fell apart, so did his mental game.
“I was just riddled with anxiety and fear and tension from the moment I left home for a tournament. It was 24/7 during tournament weeks, I was extremely anxious and not sleeping and it becomes a vicious cycle. You’re constantly draining energy but at that point I was hitting balls like I needed to do it more to make my swing better.
“I felt like I needed to do it more and there’s a saying with golfers: the secret’s in the dirt – golf is practice until your hands bleed. But I was in a point where I was not really connected to myself in my swing.”
Then came Covid where, understandably, Wood didn’t want to play very often and, come the end of the 2022 season, he had lost his card.
“About six weeks before the end of the season, I sat down with DP World Tour doctor Tim Swan and just opened up and revealed I’d been struggling. From there the Tour medical team have been great, they put me in touch with the right people but then I played in South Africa on the HotelPlanner Tour in January 2023 and I just broke down while speaking to my parents on the phone and they just both said ‘come home’.”
Fast forward three and a bit years and Wood is back on the HotelPlanner Tour, courtesy of his recent efforts on the MENA Tour, but now he is a winner again.
The now 38-year-old landed the Italian Challenge Open at the weekend with some brilliant golf, 24 birdies and just two birdies, to signal some far brighter times ahead.
If you follow tour golf you’ll already have a good idea that Wood is one of the really good guys.
Wood is about as normal as you could get from a player of his standing. Once upon a time he was put forward for a magazine piece to talk about the work that greenkeepers do and he happily stayed on the phone for 45 minutes.
There were glimpses of this when he had a top 10 last year in Turkey around 12 months ago which prompted him to open up.
When we all scroll through our phones and see these short videos, as nice as they are, they tell us very little about the true battle back to playing somewhere approaching his best again. Wood, who has now four children to throw into the mix, explains that it was a case of very small steps to begin with.
“When I first started trying to get back onto the course in 2023, my coach decided we should just start with a 6-iron and a putter and go and play nine holes. That was my first time back on the course and that was brilliant because there isn’t really any trauma for me with a 6-iron.I’m OK to fail now which is great so we’re trying to make that practice a bit harder because I can take a little fall now whereas a year or so ago, any more damage was really traumatic.”
The final kicker is that Wood finally got to give his daughter the chance to dress up.
Speaking last year Wood added: “My daughter wants a trophy party so she can wear a party dress. My children have not seen me win a tournament so that’s a huge motivator.”
Well now she can – and hopefully it will be the first of several.
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Article Link: How Chris Wood rebuilt his game and confidence after anxiety struggles