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I heard a story from a reliable source that in one of Gary Woodland’s first PGA Tour events he was to tee off on the 10th hole, a 385 yard par 4. He was 3rd to hit and the hole was playing a bit downwind, and when it came to be his turn to hit he just stood there and waited. No one seemed to know what his deal was, and when someone said “are you going to hit, or what?” he mumbled something about waiting for the group ahead to clear the green. You could imagine the snickering from the gallery and possibly even his playing partners, but sure enough, he flushed the drive and rolled it up onto the front of the putting surface.
Such is the power of this young player, a poster boy among a generation of athletes who have come to the game having learned to smash the ball with maximum force from the first time they picked up a club. Woodland does so with a decidedly conventional looking move, utilizing a relatively slow backswing with a super hard catch and lightning forward swing to pulverize the ball like few others who can still manage to find the ball. Woodland has already won and been in contention many other times, and it is apparent that he is also a fine putter and short game artist. Indeed, if you drive it 350 and hit wedge from 150 every hole from 500 yards and in is a driver and a wedge, which means that if he works on driving the ball in play and spends lots of time on his short game and putting he should be good to go for the future.
The only problem I see is technique oriented, as I am not a big fan of vertically dropping hands (I think the right arm tends to get trapped behind the right side in the downswing), but certainly his incredible lower body action and overall strength and control of the club make up for that. If he continues to improve he could turn out to be among the great players.