For the past 75 years, May has served as Mental Health Awareness month and never was its significance brought into sharper focus than with the sudden death of professional golfer Grayson Murray last week.
On Friday, May 24, Murray had reached the 16th hole of his second round at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, and decided that he could no longer continue playing, citing illness for his withdrawal.
A day later he was dead.
Murray was just 30.
A winner of three consecutive Junior World Championships, Murray had battled alcohol addiction as well as anxiety and depression in recent years.
But after winning the Sony Open in Hawaii in January, making the world’s top 50 players list and maintaining sobriety for eight months, it had seemed as though Murray was finally on the right track. “I wanted to give up a lot of times. Give up on myself. Give up on the game of golf. Give up on life, at times,” he said after his victory.
On Saturday, meanwhile, Murray’s parents, Eric and Terry, confirmed their son had taken his own life.
While the news of Murray’s passing rocked golf, with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan saying he was “at a loss for words,” it was further evidence that golf remains a solitude-laden sport whose participants appear more predisposed to mental health struggles than athletes who tour with the support of teammates.
Plenty of players have talked openly about their issues, including Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson and Matthew Wolff.
Just this past Tuesday, Lexi Thompson, a winner of 11 LPGA Tour events, announced she was retiring from pro golf at 29, purely because of the mental toll the game was taking.
It’s understandable.
Golf, after all, isn’t just a difficult game — it’s a really difficult game.
It attracts the introverted and self-absorbed.
It requires ceaseless dedication and, for the most part, success will be routinely dwarfed by disappointment.
In 2021, Dr. John Fry, Research Lead for Sport at Myerscough College, interviewed scores of professional golfers for his research into the stresses associated with being an elite player.
He found the increasing demands of Tour schedules and being away from friends and family was negatively impacting players’ mental health.
The golfers citing loneliness, isolation, low social support and high psychological demands as factors affecting their well-being.
Crucially, Dr. Fry found that the relationships players did make on Tour were often tainted by tension, conflict and rivalry.
And things have only gotten worse since golf decided to wage its own civil war.
Next week it will be two years since Saudi-backed rival tour LIV Golf launched its first ever tournament where, in the swish of a driver, professional golf was thrown headlong into an existential crisis.
Since then, scores of high-profile defectors — including Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Jon Rahm — switched to LIV from the rival PGA Tour for eye-watering amounts of money, often running into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Despite ongoing talks of a merger, the entire sorry saga has been grubby, vicious and vulgar.
It has seen tournaments ruined, reputations trashed and long-term friendships cast asunder.
And for what, really?
So a bunch of multi-millionaires can make even more money than they already do.
Which gets us back to perspective — or the conspicuous lack of it in professional golf.
This week, in a press conference before the RBC Canadian Open in Hamilton, Canada, Rory McIlroy, the former world number one and the man who has often been at the sharp end of the PGA Tour versus LIV debate, said Murray’s death was a reminder that golfers are “still human beings” who are “vulnerable and fragile.”
He’s right, of course and after the last two years — where greed and recrimination have all too often taken golf’s center-stage — it’s time for players to step back, reflect on their behavior and gain some much-needed perspective on what remains a privileged and extremely well-paid profession.
Yes, if Grayson Murray’s tragic death proves anything, it’s that golf and golfers have much more that unites them than divides them and they would do well to remember that next time they tee it up.
As McIlroy said this week: “I think if there’s a lesson for anyone out there it’s just to be kinder to each other.”
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis and live in New York City, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. If you live outside the five boroughs, you can dial the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention hotline at 988 or go to SuicidePreventionLifeline.org.
