Grayson Murray en path to his second Korn Ferry Tour victory of the 12 months final week.
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When PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan met with gamers on the Canadian Open in June, the temper was “tense” and “heated.” Those have been Monahan’s phrases, and the environment was comprehensible, given simply hours earlier Monahan had introduced on CNBC that the Tour was partnering with its one-time bitter rival, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which funds LIV Golf.
Among probably the most agitated gamers within the room was Grayson Murray, a 29-year-old one-time Tour winner with a historical past of colourful antics and controversial opinions. In 2017, his rookie season on Tour, Murray invited a Playboy mannequin to caddie for him on the Masters Par-3 Contest (Murray didn’t qualify for the Masters so the stunt by no means had an opportunity to materialize); fired a caddie mid-round; and apologized for an inappropriate tweet he despatched to a highschool woman. In the ultimate spherical of the 2022 U.S. Open, Murray flung his putter into the fescue and snapped an iron over his knee en path to a 10-over 80; 4 months later he crashed a scooter in Bermuda, leaving him unconscious, in want of fifty stitches and with a critical knee damage. Last 12 months, Murray known as out Kevin Na’s tempo of play on social media, which, in accordance with Murray, led to Na confronting Murray on the vary on the Mexico Open.
At the June gamers assembly in Toronto, Murray, in accordance with a number of reviews, got here in with a head of steam and berated Monahan for betraying and mendacity to the Tour membership. A participant in attendance told Golf Channel, “I forget exactly what led to this, but Rory [McIlroy] goes, ‘Just play better, Grayson,’ and that got a bad response from the crowd.”
According to the report, Murray instructed McIlroy to, “F— off.”
McIlroy’s jab was solely partly correct, as a result of whereas Murray had certainly not been enjoying nicely on the PGA Tour (by the use of his limited-start previous champion standing), lacking 5 cuts in seven apearances in 2023 to that time, he was exhibiting indicators of life elsewhere. Every week earlier than the Canadian Open, Murray had completed third at a Korn Ferry Tour occasion, in North Carolina, which got here simply two weeks after he had gained a KFT event, in Kansas City. Murray simply wasn’t seeing the identical success on the PGA Tour. That continued to be the case in Canada, the place he missed one other reduce.
But then, in July, got here a optimistic signal on the PGA Tour: a T6 on the John Deere Classic.
“I think everyone kind of goes through some ups and downs with their confidence,” Murray stated after his first-round 64 at TPC Deere Run. “But if you see the results and believe in yourself, then I think there’s no reason that I can’t step on the first tee and think that I’m the best player in the field, without a cocky way of saying it.”
Every week later, Murray had one other robust PGA Tour end, tying for seventh on the Barbasol Championship.
Still, he had a protracted strategy to go to ascend into the highest 125 FedEx Cup level earners for 2023, which might safe him full standing for subsequent season. So, Murray saved at it on the Korn Ferry, realizing that ending high 30 on the KFT factors listing at season’s finish was one other route by which he may bolster his PGA Tour standing.
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Murray’s life within the higher ranks {of professional} golf has not been straightforward. In 2021 he wrote on social media (in a publish that has since been deleted), that he was coping with alcohol-abuse points and that the Tour had put him on probation for an alcohol-related incident at a resort bar in Hawaii. He added: “No 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 been acknowledged by the commissioner or the PAC other than ‘we will get back to you’.” (The Tour, in response, stated in an announcement, “We can unequivocally say that the PGA Tour is a family, and when a member of that family needs help, we are there for him. That has been the case here and will continue to be.”)
“Why was I drunk?” Murray wrote of the Hawaii incident. “Because I’m a f—ing alcoholic that hates everything to do with the PGA Tour life and that’s my scapegoat. I’ve honestly gotten a lot better since then. Actually a lot better.”
When Murray wrote that since-deleted publish in July 2021, he hadn’t made a PGA Tour reduce in three months. That similar month, he entered remedy for mental-health and alcohol-abuse points. When Murray returned to competitors in 2022, he struggled to search out his kind. On the PGA Tour that 12 months, he missed seven cuts in 11 tries; in 10 KFT begins, he missed three cuts and twice withdrew, and additionally failed to enhance his PGA Tour standing within the KFT finals.
Which led to, in 2023, one other 12 months of pinging between the PGA and Korn Ferry circuits.
Murray began the 12 months slowly on each excursions, however then, in May, got here his first Korn Ferry win since 2016, an indication that he was doing the proper issues each on and off the course. Murray, who has stated he has struggled to make use of downtime constructively between tournaments, was now spending his off hours engaged in additional healthful actions, like figuring out or catching a film. He additionally realized that, at 29, he nonetheless had loads of golf forward of him. “I kind of had a coming-to-Jesus moment,” he stated in July, “and said, ‘Hey, look, I have an opportunity here. I probably haven’t reached my prime yet. I can get on a good solid 10-year run, and that’s what I plan on doing. I’m in such a good spot right now where I don’t want to change anything I’m doing.”
That included persevering with to work on his psychological sport, which Murray stated has been “a 1 out of 10 for my whole career.” Earlier this month, within the two-week break between the primary two of 4 Korn Ferry Finals occasions, Murray, as a part of what he described as a “hard reset,” didn’t a contact a membership for 9 days and flew from Florida to San Diego for a coaching session with Tony Blauer, a famend self-defense and “fear management” teacher who works with Navy SEALS.
“It’s crazy how fear is one of those things that it happens to all of us, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t experience fear,” Murray stated. “Being out here on the golf course trying to win tournaments, there’s a lot of things going through your mind, and whether you want to call it fear or not, I think us men don’t like to use that word, but there’s a lot of times where, oh, there’s water left, you don’t want to hit it left — that’s a fear.”
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Murray stated the coaching was “exhausting” however rewarding, and in his subsequent begin — the second KFT Finals occasion, the Simmons Bank Open, in Nashville — he instantly put his new instruments to make use of, together with a customized ball marker Murray had commissioned with the acronyms “SOP” and “WIN” stamped on it, brief for “succeed on purpose” and “what’s important now.”
“I just kept looking at that ball marker and it never got me looking ahead, it kept me in the moment,” he stated.
All these little moments led to 1 massive one: Murray’s second Korn Ferry win of the 12 months, which assured him a spot within the high 30 and a PGA Tour card for 2024. Afterward, Murray’s caddie, Kip Henley, said he’d never seen his man so calm and that Murray “absorbed the mistakes like he’d never seen him do.” Henley added, “If I have this guy every week, I’ll be wearing diamonds on every finger.”
Murray was reflective in victory. He ruefully regarded again on the errors that “kept me from being the player that I could have been” but in addition forward to the chance that awaits him. “I turn 30 in less than a month and I just kind of had a hard talk to myself and realized that I’m getting a second chance,” he stated. “Luckily, we play a game where we can have careers into our 50s, so 30 is still young. I feel like I have a lot of good golf ahead of me.”
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