{"id":502434,"date":"2026-03-29T21:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T21:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/502434\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T21:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T21:51:09","slug":"anxiety-was-like-living-with-a-monster-but-i-never-lost-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/502434\/","title":{"rendered":"Anxiety was like living with a monster but I never lost belief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sport is not as easy as it often looks. In the world of professional golf, you could be forgiven for thinking it is all private jets, inflated prize funds and a tenuous grasp on reality, but there is another side and Chris Wood has been there.<\/p>\n

Ten years ago he won the DP World Tour\u2019s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship, rose to No22 in the world and made the Ryder Cup team. Then he was slowly savaged by the insidious creep of injuries and an anxiety that grew into a crippling vice that would leave him standing in the garden late at night. You would not wish that on anyone, but Wood, 38, is also a nice bloke and so that makes it doubly pleasing to see him winning again.<\/p>\n

These wins are smaller. Three triumphs on the Mena Tour mean he has topped its rankings and gets to the HotelPlanner Tour, one step away from the DP World Tour. By his previous standards, this is small beer, but as Padraig Harrington recently told him during an impromptu pep talk in Qatar \u2014 \u201cwinning is winning\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After losing his card in 2022, Wood even took a year off, but the fire was never extinguished even if it dimmed. \u201cIt\u2019s not enjoyable, feeling what I did, but I never fell out of love with the game,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt like I don\u2019t want to do this. I want to keep going because I believe I\u2019ve got these shots inside me, I can hit these shots, but it\u2019s hard when you\u2019re up at 1am or sleeping in the spare room because you don\u2019t want to disturb your wife. You can\u2019t get away from it, and it\u2019s like a monster that you\u2019re constantly living with, but the steps I\u2019ve taken and progress I\u2019ve made over the last two years, it\u2019s like I\u2019m a different person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChrisAfter losing his tour card, Wood is working his way back up the rungsOctavio Passos\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

During 2023 he took advantage of the DP World Tour\u2019s mental health support, but he is not sure any of it truly helped. \u201cThis is utterly golf specific,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a case of sitting on a sofa talking it out. I just had to feel safer and more equipped to go out on a golf course.\u201d<\/p>\n

He won $18,000 in Portugal in November, and the same when he triumphed in Egypt and Morocco this year. He is not in it for the money, and is too good to be banging the drum about this, but they are significant stepping stones and he has four kids who had not seen him win. Now he says his daughter has the medal he got for winning in Egypt draped on her bed. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s nice but it\u2019s not what I\u2019ve got in my head. This isn\u2019t where I want to be winning. I\u2019ve been dipping my toe back in and now I\u2019ll probably play 18 events this year. Six months ago I missed the cut at Q School, but now I\u2019ve earned an opportunity to get my card back. That\u2019s the focus because, let\u2019s be honest, nobody wants to play on the Challenge Tour. It\u2019s not designed for 38-year-old players who\u2019ve been pro for 18 years and have four kids; it\u2019s for 21-year-olds fresh out of college. But I can see progress and feel I\u2019m on the path back now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChrisWood came from three shots down to win the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in 2016Richard Heathcote\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

As the golf world looks to the Masters next week, with its manicured fairways, Champions Dinner smorgasbord and historic prize, Wood\u2019s progress may seem minor in comparison, but that view lacks perspective.<\/p>\n

Even during his Ryder Cup year, he said he had detected his ball flight was not quite right. Then he suffered from coaches trying to mechanise his swing, rather than letting his intuition emerge. A bulging disc in his neck left him unable to lift his baby daughter. When you listen to him he speaks with more mystification than self-pity, but you can almost pick a nadir. <\/p>\n

One possibility was when he played Wentworth in 2019 without a driver in the bag. \u201cThe scary thing is that it was only three years after I won it. I started to feel this complete overriding sense of anxiety. When I missed a cut on a Friday I cannot explain the sense of relief and when cuts were made I was absolutely drained. I now know I should have stopped earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he first went back on to the course 2023, he started with a six-iron and putter because he had no \u201ctrauma\u201d associated with those clubs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Various people and ideas have helped. His wife, Bethany, has been a rock, and he has found the right coaching team in James Martin and Ed Coughlan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ChrisWood\u2019s driving in particular suffered during his declineMontana Pritchard\/PGA of America via Getty Images<\/p>\n

He also says he has listened to a Jonny Wilkinson podcast 20 times, and was recently sent a video of the deep-thinking fly half working with England players. \u201cIt looked like the ball was only going about 20 yards, but that was not the important thing. He was looking at what the player was doing with his foot, the position of the laces.\u201d For Wood,\u00a0it has also been\u00a0a quest to find satisfaction in the process rather than the outcome. \u201cThat\u2019s what plagued me on the golf course because of those few years where I was just seeing the horror shots from what I was doing. The outcome had such a strong hold on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wood plays a Friday roll-up at his local course, Long Ashton, and when things were bad he would lose balls and find the wrong fairway, but his dad offered some pertinent paternal wisdom. \u201cHe said until I could shoot 65 there I wasn\u2019t going to do it on tour, and he was right. Last week I made nine birdies. It might not sound much but from where I\u2019ve been just seeing a bit of light, and feeling \u2018I\u2019m going to hit driver on this hole\u2019 whereas previously I\u2019m hitting a four-iron, is progress that I can carry forward into events.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tFitzpatrick Jr follows in brother\u2019s footsteps with European tour win\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Alex Fitzpatrick overcame a six-shot deficit with a blazing run of birdies on Sunday to overcome Eugenio Chacarra with a three-under 69 to win the Indian Open, finally joining his older brother as a European tour winner.<\/p>\n

Matt Fitzpatrick, the 2022 US Open champion and a nine-times European tour winner, won the Valspar Championship last week in Florida. It is the first time brothers have won in consecutive weeks on the PGA Tour and European tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great to join my brother Matt as a winner,\u201d Fitzpatrick, 27, said. \u201cIt can be hard sometimes when you\u2019re constantly chasing someone\u2019s accolades but luckily it\u2019s my brother, so it\u2019s not horrific. It\u2019s extremely nice to join him in the winners\u2019 ranks and hopefully I can continue to push on. I idolise him, so just trying to be like him in every way. Hopefully we can keep doing well.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the neck and mental problems, I wonder if it hurts too much to look back, but in his practice studio at home, not far from Bristol, he displays a collection of bags, including his Ryder Cup one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud of what I\u2019ve done,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t really look back, but about six weeks ago I did come across a 20-minute package of me and Justin Rose playing our foursomes match.\u201d They beat Jimmy Walker and Zach Johnson that Saturday before Wood lost a narrow singles match with the world No2 at the time, Dustin Johnson. \u201cI really enjoyed watching that,\u201d he said. I just loved being in that environment, and despite the feelings I\u2019ve had in the last few years I think I can cope with that again. It\u2019s motivating seeing things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheWood, back row, fourth from left, with Team Europe at Hazeltine National Golf Course in Minnesota ahead of the 2016 Ryder CupJIM WATSON \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

So, too, is seeing old friends come through their own slumps. Wood says he texted Matt Fitzpatrick after his success in recent weeks and told him he was inspiring. \u201cI count Fitzy as a friend on tour and seeing friends do as they are is motivating \u2014 but it hurts a little as well. Fitzy had his drop of form but in the last year he has been outstanding. It\u2019s doable \u2014 I\u2019m just coming from a bit further back with the mental challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

More help has come from Sir Nick Faldo, now recovering from open-heart surgery, who has always been available on the end of a phone. \u201cWe have some video calls and lots of voice notes. He\u2019s somebody for me to bounce ideas off. The image of Faldo and [David] Leadbetter rebuilding A B C, elbow\u2019s got to be here, this, that and the other, could not be further from how he is. He is so creative and has so many ideas. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he was changing things he said he\u2019d play four holes at Wentworth and exaggerate his feels to the extreme. That\u2019s how he developed shots like what he calls his chicken wing, where he winged his left elbow through the ball and it produced a five-yard soft cut. He worked out that would take six yards off a five-iron. This is a guy who experimented all the time. It was not \u2018golf swing by numbers\u2019. For me to have a relationship with someone like that is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wood has been told to mark these victories, his first since 2016, but he is not a drinker and so he has taken to using the land at his home. \u201cI have a little tractor and I treat myself by going out for a couple of hours,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of calmness.\u00a0I allow myself to switch off. I come home now and feel like I can breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sport is not as easy as it often looks. In the world of professional golf, you could be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-502434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}