Golf world mourns death of Grayson Murray: ‘It’s a huge loss for all of us on the PGA Tour’

Peter Malnati played the first two days of this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge alongside Grayson Murray, who withdrew after 16 holes in Round 2, citing illness. After learning of Murray’s death on Saturday morning and completing his third round at Colonial Country Club, Malnati spoke with CBS Sports’ Amanda Balionis.

“It’s a huge loss for all of us on the PGA Tour,” a shaken Malnati said. “As much as we want to beat each other, we’re one big family, and we lost one today. It’s terrible.”

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said he learned around 11 a.m. of Murray’s death. Monahan said he spoke to Murray’s family and then flew to Ft. Worth, Texas.

Three years ago, Murray, who had publicly battled alcohol and mental health issues, posted on social media that he felt the Tour didn’t do enough to assist players who dealt with illnesses such as his. Monahan told the assembled media at Colonial that he and Murray had since then had several positive conversations.

“When Grayson said that, I called him right away. Over the last several years, I spent a lot of time with him because I wanted to understand what we could do, in his estimation, to help everybody else out here,” Monahan said Saturday.

“I’m devastated by Grayson’s loss. The conversations I had with him, particularly in the last year, I learned an awful lot from him. He was very open and transparent with me.”

In January, Murray won the Sony Open, his first PGA Tour victory in nearly seven years. Afterwards, he spoke of greater triumphs, saying he had been sober for eight months, was engaged, and had become a Christian.

“You look at Grayson and you see someone who was visibly and outwardly struggling in the past, and he’s been open about it,” Malnati said. “And then you see him get his life back to a place where he’s feeling good about things… it’s so sad.”

The devastation felt by Malnati and Monahan permeated the golf community. These are just some of the reactions from those mourning the loss of the 30-year-old:

“Obviously the news hasn’t really sunk in quite yet, but I’m thinking about his family and praying hard for all of them. I can’t imagine how difficult of a time this is. I got to know Grayson a bit better over the last six months or so and, yeah, really just, there’s not really a way to put into words how sad and tragic it is, but I’m thinking about his family.” — Scottie Scheffler

“My guy lived a tough life. His struggles are over and I know he’s not in pain anymore. Hate to lose somebody who regardless of what people said was always so great to me. RIP brother.” — Will Zalatoris

“I think I first met Grayson at my home club when Grayson was probably 8 years old, maybe 9. He was the first winner of the Webb Simpson Challenge Junior Tournament that I’ve had for 14 years. So, when you hear news like that over the phone you don’t think it’s real at first, and you know, you hear the emotion coming from our [once shared] swing coach [Ted Kiegiel] and then you realize it’s real. But I know that his mom was with him during the Wells Fargo Championship and I think they were hanging out together, and I loved those two days we got [grouped] together. So, I’m super thankful for getting some good time with him before the bad news of today.” — Webb Simpson