Allison Anderson

[Allison Anderson @AlliAnderson_]

@Ctdport Happy anniversary friends!

[Chad Withrow @TheChadWithrow]

If you are an American that’s somehow now rooting for Belgium because of politics, you need to get your head examined. It’s US against the World now and I love it.

[Chad Withrow @TheChadWithrow]

I was skeptical when Tennessee announced the switch from Nike to Adidas but this content is getting me excited.

[Allison Anderson @AlliAnderson_]

@johnnieO Any smalls?

[Game 7 @game7__]

Gary Woodland is the anti-Tiger Woods in every possible way.

Allow me to explain why.

Gary Woodland just won the Houston Open by five shots.

Two and a half years ago, doctors cut a baseball-sized hole in his skull to remove a brain lesion.

He spent two nights in the ICU.

There was a real chance he would wake up paralyzed.

This is the best comeback story in golf right now and it's not even close.

The full story behind today is insane.

In 2019, Gary Woodland won the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

He finished 13-under and beat Brooks Koepka by three strokes.

At that point, Woodland had four PGA Tour wins including a major, and was ranked 12th in the world.

Then everything slowly fell apart.

After the 2023 Masters, Woodland became consumed by fear.

Not regular nerves.

Actual, debilitating terror.

He was afraid he was going to die.

Afraid something was going to happen to his kids.

Afraid of falling to his death in his sleep.

At the Memorial Tournament in June 2023, he woke up in his hotel room and clung to the mattress for an hour.

He was convinced that if he let go, he would fall.

His hands were trembling.

He had no appetite.

Spasms would jolt him awake at night.

He was losing focus over putts.

Forgetting what club he was holding mid-swing.

An MRI finally revealed the cause.

A lesion was growing on his brain.

It was pressing directly on the part of his brain that controls fear and anxiety.

Think about that.

The thing responsible for every irrational terror he was experiencing had a physical, medical explanation.

His brain was literally being pressed into a constant state of fear.

In September 2023, Woodland had a craniotomy.

Surgeons removed as much of the lesion as they could, roughly half, because it was pressed against the optic tract of his left eye.

They cut off blood supply to the rest to try to stop it from growing.

He walked out of the hospital two days later.

Started putting again two days after that.

He came back to the PGA Tour in January 2024 at the Sony Open.

But he was nowhere near the same player.

In 26 starts during 2024, he had three top-25 finishes.

His best was a tie for ninth at the Shriners Children's Open.

For a former U.S. Open champion, those are survival numbers.

And nobody knew the full extent of what he was dealing with.

Because on top of the brain surgery and the recovery, Woodland had been diagnosed with PTSD.

He kept it hidden for over a year.

He described being hypervigilant on the course.

A walking scorer once got too close from behind and startled him so badly that his vision went blurry and he forgot where he was.

He would go into bathrooms between holes and cry.

He would break down in the scoring trailer after rounds.

He would sprint to his car in the parking lot just to hide it from everyone.

He said he felt like he was living a lie.

Spending so much energy pretending to be okay that he had nothing left for the actual golf.

On March 9, three weeks before this Houston Open, Woodland finally told the truth publicly.

He sat down with Golf Channel's Rex Hoggard and revealed everything.

The PTSD.

The crying.

The fear.

All of it.

He said after that interview it felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted off his back.

Then he showed up at Memorial Park.

He opened with a 64.

Then a 63.

Then a 65.

Then a 67 on Sunday to close it out.

259 total.

A tournament record.

21-under par.

Five strokes clear of Nicolai Højgaard.

Wire to wire.

Led every single round.

His first win since the 2019 U.S. Open.

Nearly seven years between victories.

Brain surgery, PTSD, two years of hiding in bathrooms between holes, and a thousand pounds of weight he was carrying that nobody could see.

This is a guy who was a basketball player first.

He grew up in Topeka, Kansas, won state basketball titles at Shawnee Heights High School, and played a year of college basketball at Washburn before he realized golf was his future.

He won the Courage Award from the PGA Tour in 2025.

The seventh player to ever receive it.

And now, at 41 years old, with titanium plates holding his skull together, he walked into Memorial Park three weeks after telling the world the truth about what he had been going through and played the best golf of the entire field for four straight days.

The full breakdown of Woodland's career, the surgery, the PTSD, and how he got to this point is here:

https://t.co/5ngVyMCs78

There is a reason this one hits different.

Comeback stories in sports usually involve torn ACLs or shoulder surgeries.

Things you can see.

Things that heal on a timeline.

Woodland's comeback was from something that rewired his brain.

Something that turned his own mind against him.

And the hardest part of his recovery wasn't physical.

It was admitting to the people around him that he wasn't okay.

Three weeks ago he said the words out loud.

Today he won a golf tournament by five shots.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Go. Big. Orange. Great, tough win for Tennessee. That’s four straight Sweet 16’s or better for Rick Barnes at Tennessee. Prior to 2000 Tennessee had only been to two Sweet 16’s in program history. Vols have had ten Sweet 16’s since 2000. Still need the final four though!

[Ryan Callahan @RyanCallahan247]

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the news I received a little more than 24 hours ago. It doesn’t seem possible that Wes Rucker is gone.

I met him when I was in college, and we were friends before we were coworkers. We ended up working together at GoVols247 for more than 15 years. He was a really good person, a loving husband and father, and an immensely talented writer. He was passionate, funny and opinionated, and he was absolutely never boring.

And the best part is that, if you’re reading this, you probably already knew all of that because he was also an open book. For better or worse, he didn’t have any secrets.

GoVols247 launched more than 15 years ago with just Wes and myself on staff. It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun, too. And if it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the chance to be part of it.

I sat next to him in press boxes and on press rows. I traveled with him on dozens of road trips, some in his old car that didn’t have air conditioning for a while. During one of those trips, I watched him get annoyed and then laugh at himself after he somehow dropped his car keys down the elevator shaft at our hotel in Memphis.

I spent countless hours with him debating the game we had just watched or whatever else was on his mind. We agreed on some things but disagreed on plenty of others, so the conversations were never dull.

He absolutely loved his job. He felt like he was born to write about sports, and I think he was right. He was an old-school journalist in many ways, but he developed a following here on Twitter/X before many others and enjoyed going back and forth with fans. He wrote exactly what was on his mind.

Wes was almost always the last writer in the press box after games. He pored over every word he wrote and took pride in his work. While writing his columns, he would often read me a few sentences at a time to make sure I liked them and agreed, or at least thought it was fair.

I’m heartbroken for his wife, Lauren, his son, Hank, and his soon-to-be-born daughter, along with the rest of his family. I’ve never known anyone else like Wes, and I probably never will. He was unabashedly Wes in every way, and that made him a lot of fun to be around.

I’ll miss seeing him at games and media availabilities. I’ll miss hearing him talk about Hank. I’ll miss our back-and-forth trash talk — and self-deprecating jokes — about our favorite baseball teams, the Cardinals and Cubs. I’ll miss seeing and hearing him complain about the officiating in almost every college basketball game. And I’ll miss reading his smart, insightful, often humorous stories and columns.

Rest easy, Wes. Knoxville won’t be the same without you.

[Patrick MacCoon @PMacCoon]

There will never be another like Wes Rucker on the UT beat. He was someone I admired instantly as a college freshman covering the Vols for The Daily Beacon.

Hope the VFL community and teams on campus come together to honor and support his family.

[Jeremy Faison @RepFaison]

If you’re cashing in big NIL money to play for @Vol_Football, you ought to give it your all in every game, including the bowl. Sitting out should come with consequences, like forfeiting a chunk of that pay.
Disappointing to see high paid starters opt out and skip the Music City Bowl tonight. Commitment should go both ways.

[Tennessee Basketball @Vol_Hoops]

HOW ABOUT THOSE TENNESSEE VOLUNTEERS

[Robert McVol @vol_equalizer]

New Meme

[Wes Rucker @wesruckerTBA]

I love my job. Really. I consider myself lucky to have a job I actually love. Many and perhaps most people aren't that lucky.

But if you paid me $50 million today ... deuces. I'm 88 and out the gate for life.

[Allison Anderson @AlliAnderson_]

@Ctdport @BenDport @emilydport Good luck @BenDport!

[Kirk Herbstreit @KirkHerbstreit]

Long trip this week for the big fella. Trying to get him mentally right! 🤣

[Josh Ramsey @JoshRamsey24]

@briancrice Since when do they move the game in progress? Every freaking time Tennessee is playing in the 2nd game we have to find it and wait on the first game to finish! The bama love is UNREAL!!!!

[Tennessee Athletics @Vol_Sports]

IT'S FOOTBALL TIME IN TENNESSEE

@tennvoice @VolNetwork

[Tennessee Golf Association @TNgolf]

#CertifiedFlusher

[Allison Anderson @AlliAnderson_]

@Ctdport @BenDport Great round @BenDport!

[Tennessee Golf Association @TNgolf]

HISTORY MADE

With his 2-over 72 today at Towhee Club, Jordan Thomas became the first double amputee to ever qualify for the Tennessee State Amateur.

The winner of the 2022 U.S. Adaptive Open multiple limb amputee category is also the founder of the Jordan Thomas Foundation.