Gary Woodland Credits Former Baseball and Basketball Career After U.S. Open Win

The U.S. Open started off as a tight race to see who would break away from the pack and take control of the major. In the end, however, Gary Woodland stood victorious with a dominant weekend performance. And he’s crediting other sports for his strong week.

Woodland ended up taking control of the tournament on Saturday when he took the outright lead over Justin Rose. After that, Woodland wouldn’t surrender the top spot even with Brooks Koepka chasing him down from behind. And after taking the victory, Woodland stood tall and reminisced on his experience with other sports that helped him get to this point.

With so many professionals turning to golf at an early age and going pro as soon as they can, Woodland took a completely different route. He originally went to college to play basketball but after Kirk Hinrich and the Kansas Jayhawks beat up on his Division II squad, he decided to transfer to Kansas and commit to golf full-time.

Gary Woodland took the #athletefirst model to the next level. pic.twitter.com/zHYOfVlWG6

— TPI (@MyTPI) June 17, 2019

That basketball experience, along with his time playing baseball gave Woodland some very transferable skills, especially living for the stressful moments.

“I think from a mental standpoint I was as good as I’ve ever been,” Woodland said. “I never let myself get ahead of myself, I never thought about what would happen if I won.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Gary Woodland (@gary.woodland) on Jun 17, 2019 at 3:25pm PDT

Staying calm in the moment is certainly something that you learn standing in a batter’s box or stepping up to hit free throws on the basketball court but he also credits those sports with teaching him toughness and breathing techniques that he still uses to this day. Perhaps this is also why some of the best amateur players typically are former baseball and basketball professionals like John Smoltz and Stephen Curry.

Whatever Woodland is doing and drawing his inspiration from, it’s certainly working for him and I wouldn’t be surprised if his baseball and basketball background lead him to even greater success on the PGA TOUR.

Cover Image via Instagram