PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — This wasn’t Gary Woodland’s initial plan. Attaining greatness in basketball, not golf, was the central focus of Woodland’s dream.
When he was leading his Shawnee Heights High hoops team in Topeka, Kan., to two state championships, Woodland had visions of starring at his beloved University of Kansas and then in the NBA.
Yet, some 20-plus years later, there he was winning the 119th U.S. Open Sunday at Pebble Beach — his first career major championship — with a gutsy final round that resembled a 20-point, fourth-quarter scoring performance in an NBA Finals.
Woodland took a one-shot lead over Justin Rose into Sunday’s final round, not a lot unlike taking a one-point lead into the fourth quarter of a state championship basketball game, and he extended it, winning by three shots.
“I think I am more nervous than I’m sure he is,’’ Woodland’s former high school basketball coach, Craig Cox, told The Post on Sunday over the phone from Kansas before the U.S. Open final round was to begin two time zones to the west. “When I was coaching him in basketball, I didn’t get nervous because he was so good that we had so much confidence in his ability. I just want to see him bring this home.’’
He did.
And based on his calm, cool and calculated performance that left no doubt along the Monterrey Peninsula, perhaps Cox will never again be nervous watching his former player try to close out major championships.
Woodland’s path to the PGA Tour, the three Tour victories he had won before Sunday and now his first major, took an acute turn because of a basketball moment he encountered when he was a freshman guard playing for Division II Washburn University in a game against Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse.
It was in that game Woodland came to the realization those Kansas players were a lot better than he was and that he was going to find it difficult to make a living as a professional basketball player — if he ever even got to that point.
“The moment really got forced on me,’’ Woodland recalled Sunday after the biggest win of his life. “I went to Washburn to play basketball, and I always believed if basketball didn’t work out, I could fall back on golf. And our first game, we played Kansas at the University of Kansas. They were ranked No. 1 in Division I, and we were ranked No. 2 in Division II.
“I was guarding Kirk Hinrich [a first-round NBA draft pick with the Bulls], and [was] like, ‘OK, I need to find something else, because this ain’t gonna work.’ That was my first game in college. I was a two-time state champion, All-State, blah, blah, blah — but that was a different level.’’
Cox called basketball Woodland’s “dream and his No. 1 passion,’’ adding, “He was a do-everything guy on the floor — he handled the ball, shot the ball, protected the basket, made the no-look passes. I never questioned a shot he took, because it was picture-perfect, and every time he shot it, we thought it was going in. He was really skilled.’’
As the uninitiated found out this week at Pebble Beach, he’s really skilled at golf, too.
“His high school and coach and the coach that recited him for golf [at Kansas] were really upset when he decided to play basketball [as Washburn],’’ Woodland’s mother, Linda, recalled. “Basketball was his first love. That was his passion. When he changed from basketball to golf, we knew it was a good decision.’’
A decision that never looked so good.
“Still today, I would say basketball is his first love,’’ Woodland’s father, Dan, said. “It surprised us when he chose basketball over golf. But I think he had it figured out. One more year of basketball was a great experience. I think he took a lot from that basketball experience at the collegiate level. I think it paid off here, too.’’
None of this would have come to fruition had it not been for that come-to-Jesus moment Woodland experienced inside Allen Fieldhouse.
After his freshman season at Washburn, Woodland transferred to Kansas to take the golf scholarship the school left open for him after he didn’t accept it the year before.
Cox said he wasn’t bummed out that Woodland chose golf over basketball “because our golf coach in high school [Lynn Riney] was a guy I had tremendous respect for and he told me, ‘Gary’s got a gear that most people don’t have, and when he goes to that it separates him from rest of the field.’
“That told me right there that, as great a basketball player he was, he couldn’t separate himself from college basketball players that same way.’’
On Sunday, Woodland showed that gear, separated himself from the best golfers in the world and he stood alone on that 18th green in the California sunset.
https://nypost.com/2019/06/17/an-ugly-basketball-game-drove-gary-woodland-to-his-golf-calling/
2019-06-17 13:08:00Z
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