[Photo: Kevin C. Cox]
Gary Woodland is the crowd favourite this week at the BMW Championship as he grew up just three hours from Bellerive Country Club in St Louis. So when he made birdie on the par-5 eighth hole during the final round to get within a shot of leader Wyndham Clark, the noise grew louder. The gallery was witnessing what they came to see.
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Then the man who is the feel-good story this year on the PGA Tour after winning in Houston shortly after publicly talking about his PTSD, stood on the ninth tee and hit a stone-cold top that went 89 metres and found a creek that has never been in play. It appeared he used a 3-wood – without a tee.
Fifteen minutes later, Woodland tapped in for a double-bogey 6 and was tied for third place, three shots behind Clark. Woodland dropped, hit his third shot to the middle of the fairway, hit an approach from 121 metres to 14 feet and two-putted for the double.
Woodland, 42, opened with birdies on holes two, four, five and eight. There was a bogey on the seventh, and the double on the ninth, having him turn in only one-under 35 by making only three pars.
