Some Thoughts on Grayson Murray

Edition No. 87 | May 31, 2024

Hey,

It has been one of the weirdest weeks.

Unfortunately, massive storms — think winds the strength of Brooks Koepka telling an R&A official that he, ahem, does not care what that official’s title is — waylaid the DFW area this week.

We have been without power all week and living all over the metroplex. I am currently finishing off this newsletter at a Starbucks in Arlington about four Gordon Sargent drives from Corey Seager’s workplace.¹ 

The silver lining in all of this is 1. Nobody I know was injured in Tuesday’s storm and 2. The extra time has allowed me to sit with my thoughts about the last week for a bit longer.

One of my friends last week asked me if I like doing TV for CBS Sports. I told him that of course it is a thrill to be on TV covering golf for CBS and everything that goes with that. But what I enjoy the most is getting to sit with my thoughts and work through them and consider them and then decipher them and hopefully translate them into something relatable that you, the reader, can hold onto or helps you work out or confirm what you’ve been thinking as well.

That’s the real thrill for me, even if it doesn’t look all that exciting on paper. That’s what really gets me going as it relates to golf and life.

I hope that comes through in these newsletters.

Onto the news.

1. I stated this in podcast form on Sunday, but two things really stood out to me about Grayson Murray’s suicide.

The first is that tour life is not what you think it is. It’s not all PJs and boondoggles. It’s hard. Really hard. I’ve been at airports past midnight, watching players who have been on the road for five straight weeks pick up their clubs, even though I know that they know that they’re about to miss the cut at the major they’ve arrived at. It makes me grateful for the amount of travel I participate in (which is enough but not too much).

Pro golf is so lonely.

You’re in new places with people you don’t know but who think they know you. You’re in those places all the time. It sounds sexy, and it’s probably fun for four or seven months. But the truth is, and I try to beat this drum often, it’s more difficult than it seems.

Lexi hit on that this week.

What often bothers me about the rhetoric of jobs in pro sports is that people sometimes act like the money and the fame and the glory makes up for all that.

It’s not how we frame it, but the way we talk about it is sometimes like, well of course that life would stink for normal people who make normal amounts of money and receive a normal amount of attention. But you, my friend, make enough money that it should solve all the loneliness and sadness and emptiness and desire that you feel.

What?!

Money and fame and glory doesn’t solve your problems. It exacerbates them!

What’s the Jim Carey quote?

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.”

It’s a good one, and it’s true. The life of a professional athlete, you may think you want it. But I don’t know that you do. Remember the famous Twitter thread about Dell Curry re-entering the dating world. It’s humorous and a little unhinged, but there’s a parallel there about the life of a pro athlete.

I had dinner with a major winner and his wife several years ago. Somebody who makes really good money and lives a really comfortable life. I told them about my setup — travel five or six weeks a year, stay home and write in my backyard shed for the rest — and there was a jealousy in the way they received that information. Not in a nefarious way, but in an “I hope you appreciate the life you have” kind of way.

I do.

And I think about that often.

I thought about it last week.

2. I don’t know what, specifically, Grayson was dealing with and I won’t pretend to know. What I do know is that there is no amount of success, wealth or achievement that can fill the hole we all have in our hearts.

Peter Malnati, in his extraordinary interview with Amanda Balionis on Saturday (which you should watch if you somehow haven’t seen it), said something that rocked me a little bit.

It was subtle, but here’s what he said.

“I was with him yesterday, and he’s playing great.

“His game is so good. He’s so good at golf.”

The implication, at least to me, seemed pretty clear: Shouldn’t that be enough? Shouldn’t it be enough that you’re succeeding. Shouldn’t finally being great at this thing that you had been trying to be great at for so long be fulfilling?

But we all know that’s now how it works. Nothing fulfills. Nothing satisfies.² Remember Rory’s tongue-in-cheek quote at Zurich this year?

“I think the one thing we’ve learned in golf over the last two years is there’s never enough.”

He was talking about LIV and the Tour and the money associated with both, but he could have been talking about the work-life balance or the [anything]-life balance.

The black hole in our hearts is not shaped like a jacket or a jug. It is an endless devourer of money and victories and alcohol and relational intimacy. It is bottomless. It is without end.

It consumes and digests everything it sees, and we keep looking around, frantic and wild-eyed looking for other stuff to put in it, the same way we consume YouTube golf tutorials, always thinking this will be the fix.

That’s exhausting. And while I don’t know if that’s what Grayson experienced, I know it’s what I have experienced at times, and I believe it to be a fairly unanimous human experience. So much so that I asked Scottie about it after he won his second Masters this year.

Q. How much do you struggle with the idea of discontentment, of needing -- whether it's more wins, more money, more fame to be satisfied, and when do you find yourself most content?

“I feel like playing professional golf is an endlessly not satisfying career. For instance, in my head, all I can think about right now is getting home. I'm not thinking about the tournament. I'm not thinking about the green jacket. I'm trying to answer your questions and I'm trying to get home.

“I wish I could soak this in a little bit more. Maybe I will tonight when I get home. But at the end of the day, I think that's what the human heart does. You always want more, and I think you have to fight those things and focus on what's good.

“Because, like I said, winning this golf tournament does not change my identity. My identity is secure [in Christ Jesus].

“I cannot emphasize that enough.”

3. I thought Nantz and Immelman were unbelievable on the broadcast. I’m not sure there’s anybody you want in that position in all of sports ahead of Nantz, which is probably exactly what we thought it would be. But Trevor brought a gravity and a personality and a humanity to the moment that was … I don’t know about unexpected … but definitely appreciated.

4. Murray was a top 60 player in the OWGR at the time he died. Which is insane. He was really, really good. It also got me thinking about other sports so I looked up players in that range from various MLB, NBA and NFL lists of player rankings. Here is one from each that was in that 55-60 range.

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

• Dak Prescott

• Rudy Gobert

The reason I looked this up is that I couldn’t help but think that if this had been a different player in a different sport (one of those above, for example), it would have been a much bigger deal from a coverage standpoint at a national level.

I’m not sure what exactly to make of that other than I think it’s probably some affirmation of what we’ve been learning for most of the last two years: that golf is more niche than any of us would like and more isolated and insulated than we would care to believe.

The flip side of that is that that insularity can lead to a “we’re all we’ve got!” worldview that is more authentically true of opponents and rivals in golf than it is in perhaps any other sport.

In a video below Scottie and Rory talk about trade secrets and how open they are to sharing them. Because it is an individual sport in which you don’t have single opponents that play defense or offense against you, that reality is quite unique to golf. In other words, it’s more difficult to imagine NFL opponents swapping ideas about route trees during a game week than it is to imagine tour pros discussing where to miss at ANGC during Masters week.

This extends beyond the playing field in golf in a way that feels genuine. I think those outside the golf world got a peek at this concept, and Malnati’s interview was so emblematic of that.

As we were talking through this week’s newsletter, illustrator Jason Page did a great job of shining a light on this broad idea and mentioned a personal anecdote that discloses the same concept, albeit in a different way

On Sunday I called my garden friend who started playing golf two months ago, and he began the call by saying “condolences.” For a golfer that neither of us knew. The reaction to Grayson’s death might have been niche but it was definitely profound.

5. While I have some extremely limited personal experience with mental health issues, this week was a harsh reminder of their depth and reverberation. So while my thoughts on a lot of this center around the emotional and spiritual (see above), a text from a friend was a good encouragement that unless you’ve lived the mental side, it’s difficult to understand the mental side.

Here’s what he said.

I believe that to be true, which is a good reason to be kind and caring toward those around us.

It’s also a good reason to ABL. I suppose ABC — Always Be Closing — sounds sexier, but Always Be Listening definitely has a greater effect on other people’s lives.

6. Speaking of kindness and care, Harry Higgs gets it. Considering the mixed emotions of the week and of winning your second straight KFT event, this is an extremely difficult speech to pull off, and he does it with such dignity and grace.

It’s worth watching if you haven’t seen it and was one of the best moments last week provided.

7. (non-Grayson related) I stumbled into this video the other day and ended up watching the entire thing. It’s such an enjoyable and fascinating conversation between two of the best players of the last quarter century.

I could listen to them talk golf all day, but I’m especially intrigued when they start discussing learning from watching each other (and other players). I think a common trait among elite golfers is humility of craft, always stealing from other elites and adding to the arsenal.

Tiger, for all his lack of humility in a lot of other areas, was always great at this.

Anyway, the video rocks. Watch it by yourself. Watch it with your son or daughter. It’s a fun and cool look at how to have a great short game, and you get a great, DJ-esque “I dunno man I just kinda do whatever” moment from Scottie about halfway through.

8. Here’s something I wrote about Brooks that got cut off at the end of an email going into the PGA Championship. I’ve been meaning to re-write it and include it, and today is an OK day for that.

Here’s what I wrote ….

I started thinking more about Brooks’ “go someplace a lot of guys can’t go” quote from a few weeks ago in the context of my own work because I think bringing it into my world helps me understand where Brooks is coming from. I have never had to go to uncharted territory mentally to win a golf tournament, but I do understand what that’s like to write about one.

Perhaps that sounds silly – perhaps it is silly – but there is such a difference between putting a piece of writing on auto-pilot, which I have learned how to do decently, and giving yourself over to it. I can feel moments at majors or the Ryder Cup where I have to go to a place filled with thoughtfulness and emotion about a moment or an event. It’s a place that I don’t often visit.

Equal parts thrilling and dreadful, I can feel those moments coming. The ones where I have to truly give my heart over to something in a way that I know will produce something wonderful but will also exhaust me. That’s the good stuff. The stuff I know you love reading because I know I love writing it.

But it’s a difficult thing, and if I had to do it every day or even every week, I would want to find another profession.

I think sometimes we underrate the difficulty of winning big events (golf or otherwise) because we don’t consider the emotional toll it takes on you. We see this in NBA teams all the time, right? It’s physically brutal, sure, to try to go back to back or win three Finals in a row. But more than that, it is emotionally taxing in a way that’s tough to appreciate.

I feel that at times in my job, maybe you do as well. And while I’m grateful to get the ball – as it were – in big moments and at monstrous events, it’s also difficult to visit that place Brooks is talking about as often as I would like. Even though the stakes and the stage are different, going there does take so much out of you as a performer.

I feel that at every major, which is, perhaps counterintuitively, always such a delight.

9. This is so excellent. There is a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. I don’t know if that is provable, but I do know that it is true.

Thanks for reading until the end.

You are a sicko.

Maybe even the type of sicko who, like me, saw this tweet and immediately thought it was about a U.S. Open champion from Australia and not what it was actually about, which is an advertising tycoon from Great Britain.

Also, if you understand even part of the below illustration, you are a certified sicko.

Lastly, all kidding aside, if you’re struggling with any of the issues noted above, you can text or call 988, which is the suicide hotline.

Or you’re always welcome to just respond to this email and we’re happy to listen and help you move in the right direction.