CARLSBAD, Calif. – Wake Forest head coach Jerry Haas was standing near the 10th fairway at Omni La Costa on Saturday afternoon, waiting for his first player to tee off in the second round of the NCAA Championship, when his phone buzzed.
It was a text message from a former player and it simply said:
Grayson Murray died.
Haas was shocked. He had recruited and drafted Murray out of high school, though Murray lasted only a semester in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, before ultimately transferring twice and spending brief stints at East Carolina and Arizona. Murray turned pro in 2015 and went on to win three times on the Korn Ferry Tour and twice on the PGA Tour, including most recently at the Sony Open in January. He had also been open in recent years about his battles with anxiety, depression and alcoholism.
Murray had withdrawn from this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge during his second round on Friday due to illness. The Tour was announced Saturday at 3:00 PM ET that he had diedat only 30 years old.
“These are your guys when you recruit them, and they come to your university,” Haas said. “I feel sorry for his father and his mother. Erik is a good man. He runs a good junior golf tour (Tarheel Junior Golf Tour), and he got my son, Kyle, to play a lot and get his start in junior golf. That’s the hardest part, thinking about his parents.”
Haas remembers a moment when a 12-year-old Murray raised his hand at a golf camp and asked Haas how to receive the Arnold Palmer Scholarship. A few years later, Murray showed tremendous potential as a high school student — “He looked like a Tour pro then,” Haas said — and when it came time to sign with Wake, he did so as the recipient of that prestigious award. scholarship.
In a 2017 story on GolfChannel.comHaas revealed a conversation he had with Murray when Murray decided to leave the team: “I said to him, ‘Young man, I’m worried about your health. I don’t worry about your wave, it will always be there. But I worry about you as a person. ”
Although Haas didn’t have much contact with Murray after Murray’s departure from Wake Forest, he kept a close eye on Murray’s golf as a pro. A few weeks ago, during the Wells Fargo Championship, Haas saw Murray play a few holes.
The current Demon Deacons of Haas scored sixteen points on Saturday, dropping three places to eighteene on the leaderboard, 14 shots behind the top eight. But as he spoke with a heavy heart, Haas kept things in perspective.
“It makes you think,” Haas said. “I’ve been doing this for 26 years and I’ve probably had close to 100 guys that I’ve recruited and played for me, and it’s a sad day. Emotionally, I thought about him a lot today, believe it or not, during the round. We weren’t playing very well and I wanted to get angry, but at the same time…’
His voice trailed off and after a short pause he concluded:
“I will miss him.”
