WHEN GRAYSON MURRAY WAS SUICIDAL, WAS ANYONE IN GOLF PAYING ATTENTION?
Life became too difficult even when a Sony Open victory helped him through alcoholism and mental issues — and the sports world is stunned by his passing and the suicide of Stan Van Gundy’s wife
The happiest news of this new golfing season was Grayson Murray. He won the Sony Open in Hawaii, in a splurge of deep faith and stirring contradiction, right on the islands where he was drunk in a hotel bar and placed on PGA Tour probation. He tweeted at the time, three years ago: “Why was i drunk? because I’m a f—ing alcoholic who hates everything to do with the PGA Tour life, and that’s my scapegoat.”
He blamed the organizing bosses for not helping him with alcoholism and mental health issues. Consider it the first hint we didn’t detect. “The PGA Tour didn't force me to drink but the PGA Tour never gave me help. In my 5 years of experience of being on tour not once have I ever had a request acknowledged by the commissioner or the PAC (player advisory council) other than ‘we will get back to you,’ ’’ Murray wrote. “I hope not only the PGA Tour steps up in the areas they need to step up, but I also hope people are held accountable in their roles they serve.”
This happened when he was 27. He was offered assurances online by Phil Mickelson, who wrote: “I'm sorry playing the Tour has been so overwhelming and if I can help in any way, I'd be happy to. It's not an easy life for sure and even winning every year can bring about other challenges. FYI — ‘we will get back to you’ — is the only response I've ever gotten too.”
The Tour claimed to have offered assistance. On his own in January, Murray crashed his demons and won at Waialae Country Club with a 40-foot playoff putt. “There are days where I didn’t want to get out of bed,” he said in his victory speech. “I just thought I was a failure. I always looked at myself as a failure. I thought I had a lot of talent that was just a waste of talent. It was a bad place, but like I said, you have to have courage. You have to have the willingness to keep going. Lo and behold, that’s what I did, and I’m here, and I’m so blessed and I’m thankful.”
He offered more hints that day. “It’s not easy on me. 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, alluding to suicide. “When you get tired of fighting, let someone else fight for you. I hope everyone at home watching can get a little inspiration from it. If I can just help one person, that’s all it takes. … I knew today was not going to change my life, but it did change my career, and I’m excited. Sometimes your highs are high out here and your lows are low. It’s a very humbling sport. My parents have been through hell and back basically for the last six years with me fighting some mental stuff. The people around me that love me, they don’t like to see me down. They’ve been my No. 1 supporters. There’s a few friends as well that have been there, and it makes these moments a lot more special when you can share it with them. It took me a long time to get to this point. I’m a different man now. I would not be in this position right now today if I didn't put that drink down eight months ago.”
The next few weeks were fine. Murray made the cut at the Masters and the PGA Championship. He seemed on his way in life, again the pride of Raleigh, engaged to be married to Christiana, ranked No. 58 by the Official Golf Ranking.
Until he committed suicide Saturday morning.
“We have spent the last 24 hours trying to come to terms with the fact that our son is gone,” parents Eric and Terry Murray said in a statement. “It’s surreal that we not only have to admit it to ourselves, but that we also have to acknowledge it to the world. It’s a nightmare. We have so many questions that have no answers. But one. Was Grayson loved? Yes. By us, his brother Cameron, his sister Erica, all of his extended family, by his friends, by his fellow players and — it seems — by many of you who are reading this. He was loved and he will be missed. We would like to thank the PGA Tour and the entire world of golf for the outpouring of support. Life wasn’t always easy for Grayson, and although he took his own life, we know he rests peacefully now.”
On this holiday weekend, when we honor and mourn U.S. military personnel, sports is haunted by a horrific sacrifice called self-destruction. Murray chose to withdraw Friday with two holes remaining at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club. He finished with three straight bogeys and left the course in Fort Worth, where he wasn’t seen again. Tour commissioner Jay Monahan offered to stop the tournament. Murray’s parents said Grayson would want the players to continue. “I am at a loss for words,” Monahan said. “The PGA Tour is a family, and when you lose a member of your family, you are never the same. We mourn Grayson and pray for comfort for his loved ones.”
Did the Tour abandon his anxieties, as Mickelson once suggested? Did Murray’s relationship with leadership improve as he joined the PGA Tour’s 16-member Player Advisory Council? Was Mickelson firing away at Monahan in his early LIV Golf vs. PGA turmoil? What we didn’t know four months ago is that Murray still was speaking about his troubled soul. “Yes, I would drink during tournament week. It was my outlet,” he said. “I thought I was invincible coming out here as a 22-year-old, winning as a rookie, played three days hungover when I won. Best thing and worst thing that ever happened to me was winning my rookie year — but also feeling like I was invincible.”
His father also spoke then about his son. “I’m telling you. Grayson is my hero because I have seen first-hand how hard it’s been,” Eric Murray said. “Most people would have given up. Said it was too hard. Gone and gotten a real job. But here’s a kid who had a problem, everyone is telling him there’s no issue, and yet he just kept digging his heels in and finding a way to do what he always wanted to do in life.”
Now we’re left to wonder if the Tour is so disgracefully uncertain, with little progress reported in long negotiations with LIV, that players aren’t helped enough with personal adversity. Was Monahan listening, with suicide in mind? “It took me a long time to get to this point. I’m a different man now,” Grayson said. “People who don't know me, I'll have to show it through my actions, and they'll get back on Grayson's side. My demeanor is so much better. It's really a lot of fun now. I really don't live and die by a golf shot anymore. I'm not going to sit here and say it's going to be all glory and roses.”
Said Monahan on Saturday, surveying the devastated scene in Texas: “To see the devastation on the faces of every player coming in is really difficult to see and really just profound. Grayson was a remarkable player, but he was a very courageous man. I’ve always loved that about him.”
Anyone watching the tournament was stunned to see Jim Nantz, turning emotional on the air. “I just want to say that the Tour did offer to the (Murray) family to stop play, right here basically at the top of the hour. The family was adamant that Grayson and the family wants the tournament to go on. Grayson Murray, gone way too soon, at the age of 30,” the broadcaster said. “It’s a sad day on the PGA tour. And somehow, with heavy hearts, we’re gonna cover a golf tournament after a break. We’re gonna cover it, we’re gonna try as best we can, be as respectful as we can in our tone and in our hearts.”
For two days last week, Peter Malnati played with Murray. “We all want to beat each other. And then something like this happens and you realize we’re all just humans,” said Malnati, openly crying. “It’s a really hard day. You look at Grayson and see him. Someone who has visibly and outwardly struggled in the past. And he’s been open about it. You see him kind of get his life back to a place where he’s feeling good about things. It’s just so sad.”
We also should lend concern and kindness to Stan Van Gundy, the TNT broadcaster and former NBA head coach, who explained for the first time that his wife died of suicide last Aug. 16. He appeared with podcaster Dan Le Batard, explaining Kim was dealing with a mental illness. “She took her own life, Dan. I can't imagine that I'll ever get over that. ... It was devastating,” Van Gundy said. “My entire adult life, I trace everything — job changes, kids, everything — I was with her, and she was by my side. I never, ever envisioned that I was going to live any day in my life without Kim.
“I knew she was going through a tough time, but I never envisioned that happening. Even now, it's been eight months, and I struggle to come to grips with the fact that I'm never going to see her again. I'm trying hard to stay connected. ... My house is full of pictures of Kim. There's a montage of pictures above my bed that my kids did for me of Kim. I'm trying hard to remember her voice, to remember her smile, all of those things. But more than anything, live her values, because her values were better than mine.
“She taught me a lot. And I want to live her values and a life that she would be proud of. And my kids at times over the last eight months, at times, not often, but I think genuinely from their point, I'll do something and they'll say, ‘Mom would have really been proud of you for that one.’ And that above anything else really makes me feel good, because my wife was an incredible person, and the loss is huge.”
He continues to produce great work as a playoff analyst. Not that he’ll ever forgive ESPN for laying off his brother, Jeff, who ranked among basketball’s tremendous in-booth commentators. For some reason, the network wanted Doris Burke and Doc Rivers to join play-by-play man Mike Breen. The crew is a bust, in part because Rivers left too early to coach the Milwaukee Bucks and was replaced by JJ Redick, who likely will leave soon to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. Why dump Van Gundy? Too old at 61? Not woke? Hubie Brown works games and he’s 90. The unemployment sickness continues in Bristol.
“He was hurt by it. I mean he worked for them for 17 years. And it wasn’t even just the fact that they made the move, I mean they s–t on him,” Stan Van Gundy said. “The timing was awful. They waited until basically the NBA market in terms of coaching jobs, assistant jobs, front-office jobs was already gone by to make the move. And then they delayed and delayed and delayed on a buyout that would free him to work for (other) people. I mean, after 17 years of being in arguably the best game broadcast booth in the business in basketball, and being the kind of person he is, ESPN s—t on him.”
Oh, why would ESPN care about the Van Gundys? The people who run the place are awful human beings and always have been. Did NBA commissioner Adam Silver order Jeff off the air because of his well-deserved complaints about league officiating? “This stuff happens in the business, we’ve all been through it,” Stan said. “We’ve been fired and everything else, but there’s ways to do it and ways not to do it. I thought ESPN was absolutely miserable to him after what he had given them for 17 years.
“My brother wouldn’t be happy if I was saying this, but it’s what happened and that’s what I’m going to say. And you know what, I don’t think anybody who knows the situation would disagree with me at all.”
I am thrilled to see Stan doing his family’s work in late May as his brother serves as a senior consultant for the Celtics. How amazing if they celebrated together if Boston wins a championship? Not very long ago, family and friends were celebrating with Murray near his Waikiki drunk scene. He still was speaking about alcoholism and his dark hole. Suicidal talk lingers. Then they find the dead body.
“It was a huge shock. My heart sank,” said Webb Simpson, who met Murray when he was 8 or 9, before he won a junior tournament started by Simpson. “When you hear news like that over the phone, you don’t think it’s real at first. Life’s not easy. I think Grayson would put his hand up first and say it’s not easy.”
“Grayson was the absolute best. Not only was he an incredible, thoughtful and generous boss, he was an even better friend,” his caddie, Jay Green, told the Golf Channel. “He truly would do anything for anyone. He has the best family, and my heart goes out to them. We will all miss him deeply.”
Said Luke Donald, Europe’s Ryder Cup captain: “Truly devastating news that Grayson Murray has passed away. He asked me for some advice on how to play Augusta a few months ago, last week I saw him at the PGA Championship. Life truly is precious. My condolences and prayers to his whole family that they may find some peace.”
“Life is so fragile. I was just hugging you at the Masters, telling you how proud of you I am,” Bubba Watson said. “Thankful to have known you.”
Did anyone in golf ever spend sufficient time getting to know Grayson Murray? Even as he kept talking, even as we assumed the best, the worst was coming.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.