Writing from Town and Country, Missouri
Thursday, August 20, 2026
Gary Woodland has been through the wringer, and still feels caught in it at times.
In the first round of the BMW Championship, he felt at home, and it paid off with a round of 6-under-par 64 on a Bellerive Country Club course that yielded no lower score and only a handful, authored by fellow U.S. Open champions Rory McIlroy, Wyndham Clark and J.J. Spaun, and current John Deere Classic winner Chris Gotterup, to match it.
Meanwhile, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler stumbled to an opening 2-over 72. He was 4-over and last in the field of 50 at one point.
Woodland won the 2019 U.S. Open, and four years later was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery was successful, but a bit of the tumor could not be removed and Woodland was left with post-traumatic stress syndrome, notably the fear of being approached from behind.
He played with no fear on Thursday, hitting 11 of 14 fairways and 17 greens – all but the last in the latter case, which cost him his only bogey of the round.
Mostly, Woodland felt comfortable, in part because, at about three hours from his boyhood home of Topeka, Kan., this is as close as the PGA Tour comes to it, and because he’s played well at Bellerive before.
“I looked at some videos of the 2018 PGA,” Woodland said after signing his scorecard. “My swing was a little shorter then. I've been working on some other things and kind of got away from that a little bit. I like a lot of the things I'm doing better now than I was doing there, but I just tried to get a little more solid at the top and, man, it allowed me to control the ball really well.”
That translated into the best numbers he’s posted since winning the Houston Open earlier this season. Among his highlights were a 54-foot birdie putt on the par-4 seventh and a 102-yard holeout for eagle on the par-4 11th.
“We were trying to hit it 105,” Woodland said of his sand wedge from the fairway. “I probably flew it one or two past where I wanted to, but it was nice to spin back into the hole.”
Now to keep it up. In 2018, he led the PGA after 18 and 36 holes, opening with a 64 then as well setting a record for the halfway point (10-under 130) and eventually finishing tied for sixth, six strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka.
For Woodland since his surgery, golf is one thing and inspiring others just by playing is another.
“I know I'm fighting for a lot more than playing golf,” Woodland said. “I'm hopefully having a positive impact on a lot of people's lives just showing up and fighting. Knowing that I'm struggling every day and hopefully – I mean, I had a kid follow me last week from came over from New Zealand who's got an inoperable brain tumor. He was 11.
“So there's, hopefully I'm having a bigger impact than just showing up and showing that I can still compete and play out here and live my dreams. The big deal is I'm struggling and I'm still living my dreams. I hope people see that and try to do the same thing.”
The five-way tie at the top is the largest in the tournament after 18 holes since the quintet of Bob Gilder, Bill Glasson, John Huston, Phil Mickelson and Sean Murphy were deadlocked at sunset Thursday at Cog Hill in 1994. The record is a seven-way tie after 18 in the flood-shortened 1987 Western on the combined Butler National-Oak Brook layout.
Clark birdied the last three holes to match Woodland, his 64 coming in the heat and humidity the St. Louis area is known for. His 38-footer for a deuce on the par-3 16th was followed by 5 1/2- and 6 1/2-footers, the latter set up by what he called a chipped 8-iron, on the last two holes.
“I just maybe added a little bit more speed in my putts,” Clark said. “I was leaving everything just short or just missing on the front nine. It's amazing on greens like this, you see a couple go in and then you feel like you can make all of ‘em.”
For McIlroy, the return to form was a reverse from last week in Memphis, where he struggled from tee to green in the St. Jude sauna.
“Days like this are encouraging, obviously,” McIlroy said of the bogey-free jaunt. “There's still a lot of work to be done. But for first round with what I'm trying to do, middle rehearsal on the takeaway, all that sort of stuff, it went as well as it could have today."
As for Scheffler, who drew many in the gallery of approximately 20,000 that McIlroy did not, his aim and distance control was off from the start. He bogeyed four of the first seven holes, then steadied himself and was 2-under the rest of the round. He was also heckled at least once, on the 12th tee from a presumably overserved patron in The Ridge, one of the many hospitality areas on the course. Scheffler glared in the direction of the voice for a long time, then drove into the right rough and salvaged par.
Around Bellerive
The scoring average of 68.500 on the par-70 layout is the second lowest first round in Western Open / BMW history, surpassed only by the 68.130 at Aronimink, also a par 70, in 2018. It’s also the fifth-lowest overall. … Chris Gotterup, one of the co-leaders, called Bellerive “a good golf course that's not overly penalizing. I think you can get it around and make some birdies here, but you can also make a couple easy bogeys. Where, last week (at TPC Southwind), you could make a triple in a heartbeat. I don't think you're going to see anyone shoot a 10-under out here either. I could be wrong, someone's probably going to do it tomorrow now.” … Of the nine first-timers in the BMW (a.k.a. the 123rd Western Open), Ryo Hisatsune had the best start, a 5-under 65. The other rookies are Michael Brennan (69), Nico Echavarria (69), Alex Fitzpatrick (66), Nicolai Hojgaard (73), Jake Knapp (67), Matt McCarty, Kristoffer Reitan (67) and Michael Thorbjornsen (66). … The big gallery prompted the WGA to ask fans to ride share or car pool the rest of the weekend. The main public parking lot at Family Arena nearly filled up for the first round. The weekend is sold out and Friday is nearly sold out.
– Tim Cronin