KU honors Woodland as venerable golfer enters school’s Hall of Fame

photo by: Henry Greenstein/Journal-World

Gary Woodland speaks to reporters outside the Kansas Golf Practice Facility on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025.

In introducing Kansas Athletics Hall of Fame inductee Gary Woodland on Friday evening at The Jayhawk Club, KU deputy athletic director Sean Lester relayed a story from an associate of Woodland’s.

Woodland’s team member recalled hearing from a PGA Tour official, “If I were on the side of the road with a flat tire, and there was one tour player that would stop to help me, it would be Gary Woodland.”

If that anecdote was meant to illustrate a certain level of selflessness inherent in the personality of Woodland — a winner of four PGA Tour events, including the 2019 U.S. Open, whose name now adorns the KU golf complex at The Jayhawk Club — it proved quite relevant just moments later, when Woodland declared that his induction should really be for “Gary Woodland and everybody else.”

Shortly after KU athletic director Travis Goff put him in the conversation with all-time great Jayhawks like Wilt Chamberlain, Gale Sayers and Lynette Woodard (“That’s probably too much for me,” Woodland said with a smile later on Friday), Woodland spent his five minutes at the podium heaping praise onto and attributing credit to everyone else he could.

In those five minutes at the KU golf practice facility, Woodland thanked his family, the late KU coach Ross Randall, his teammates, his academic staff and the university as a whole — noting in particular how KU has supported him in recent years as he has battled his way back into golf after having brain surgery to remove a benign tumor.

“I showed up in 2003 and this university’s been nothing but supportive, and through the toughest stretch of my life, they’ve been by my side, with doctors, hospitals and more eyes,” Woodland said. “They’ve made this journey a lot easier on me and my family, and for that I’m forever grateful.”

He added after the ceremony that he felt his recent adversity, the battle against which earned him the 2025 PGA Tour Courage Award, had deepened his relationship with KU.

“I’ve had a tough journey, and it’s been documented, but KU’s helped me,” Woodland said. “They’ve got me in with doctors, they’ve helped me through this medical process, when they didn’t have to. I’m graduated, I’m not even living here but I’ve moved all my health care back here because KU’s taken such good care of me. They’re a special part of my life.”

Goff pointed out in introducing Woodland that the golfer’s own commitment to KU has gone above and beyond. As the AD pointed out, Woodland could have had “a heck of a legacy” if he had simply remained one of the program’s all-time best golfers, but instead he and his wife Gabby have made Lawrence their “second home.”

“You’ve been around our young men, our young women, you’ve mentored, you’ve given, developed relationships, you’ve stood out in our community in representing that Jayhawk time and again,” Goff said. “And that might have been enough, right? But no, not the Woodlands. They stepped up and they invested directly from their own personal coffers to help make a facility of this magnitude come to fruition.”

That was a particularly relevant note as part of a ceremony that also served as a sort of dedication for both the complex, named after Woodland, and the practice facility, named after donors Tom and Kathy Wiggans.

“When I came here I hit under a tree in the back of the range, now we got buildings with heaters and music and all kinds of stuff going,” Woodland said. “It’s awesome to see, but I had a great opportunity here. It’s nice to be able to give back and hopefully provide a small part of the opportunity (to) the kids that come through here as well.”

Woodland recounted the story on Friday of Randall making what the coach described as the second-ever in-home visit in his 23 years at KU “because he saw something different in me.” The Topeka native ended up choosing to play basketball at Washburn instead, only to — rather famously — realize after an exhibition game against the Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse that his future was elsewhere.

Years later, Woodland made his way through the PGA Tour, with plenty of success, Randall would always text him on Sunday nights during the tour telling him what he had done wrong. The two remained close before Randall died in 2017.

“There’s not a better coach in the world for me than Coach Randall,” Woodland said. “He was hard on me. But he also loved me when I needed it most. And that never stopped until the day he died.”

In the modern-day world of KU golf, women’s golf coach Lindsay Kuhle said her players aspire to achieve what Woodland has and called him “an awesome example of what it means to be a Jayhawk.”

The affection between the golfer and his alma mater is quite clearly mutual.

“I love this place,” Woodland said. “I love everything about it. I love the people, and I’m proud to have my name associated with the University of Kansas.”

photo by: Henry Greenstein/Journal-World

The Gary Woodland Golf Complex sign is photographed on the day of Woodland’s induction into the Kansas Athletics Hall of Fame, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, at the Kansas Golf Practice Facility.