Masters 2024: Gary Woodland hits a hole-in-one just SIX MONTHS after having a brain tumor removed as he achieves feat for first time in Par 3 competition

Masters hopeful Gary Woodland sealed one of the most heartwarming comeback stories for many a year on Wednesday by sinking his first career hole-in-one.

Woodland, a former US Open champion, only returned to the PGA Tour at the start of the year after undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumor in September.

And just over six months on from the op, the 39-year-old hit the first hole-in-one of his professional career at the Augusta National Golf Club.

In the traditional Par 3 competition on the eve of the Masters, which sees players take part in a light-hearted event with members of their families serving as caddies, Woodland achieved the feat from around 140 yards out on the sixth hole.

He pulled off the hole-in-one after son Jaxson, 6, and twin daughters Maddox and Lennox, 4, joined him on the course in miniature Masters caddie outfits for the event, before his eldest child went and retrieved the ball for him.

And incredibly, on the very next hole Woodland came agonizingly close to making it two career hole-in-ones in the space of minutes.

The former world No 12 was almost wheeling away in celebration once again, only to have his tee shot lip out at the very last moment.

Woodland first began showing symptoms of his lesion in the brain back in April 2023, after experiencing tremors and chills while having trouble sleeping.

'It came out of nowhere,' he said in January of the symptoms, which began a few weeks after last year's Masters. 'It was a horrible experience. All you wanted to do was go to sleep to not think about it, and going to sleep was the worst part.

'That is where all the seizures were happening. It was a horrible four, five months.'

He added: 'As it got worse, loss of appetite, chills, no energy. It started getting pretty bad to where I was meeting... I have a performance coach, I'm working with her. 

It started getting so bad I called my doctor who I've been with for 13 years and I was like, man, I need something to calm me down. Almost anxiety.

An MRI eventually revealed the tumor, but he continued to play golf up until his surgery five months later.

Doctors are believed to have drilled a hole in his skull the size of a baseball, before removing a tumor which proved to be benign. 

Woodland returned at Hawaii's Sony Open in January, where he failed to make the cut. Now the man from Topeka, Kansas, is hoping to build on that at this week's Masters.

'Obviously it's been a journey,' he said on Tuesday about his recovery. 'It's been a process for the last year. But there's nowhere I'd rather be right now.'