The Misunderstood Life of Grayson Murray

The bedroom is filled with reminders of who Grayson Murray was and wanted to be. A black case in the corner holds the Sony Open trophy. Self-help books press against his tattered Bible on a nightstand. A canvassed painting of the family’s dogs sits across from a framed autographed photo of Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods. On the comforter are two unpacked boxes of programs from his funeral.  

Grayson spent a lot of time in his bedroom. He had his own condo in Jupiter, Florida, but preferred to be in his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, tattooing the city’s area code on his arm, “9-1-9.” It was here, where the suburbs bleed into the countryside, that Grayson would retreat when the darkness rolled in, shutting himself off for days. He tried to mask the depression and was frequently glued to his phone sending messages of encouragement to those at the Betty Ford Clinic or recovering addicts: I know it’s not easy. Keep at it. You’re not alone. Unfortunately, Grayson couldn't extend himself the same grace.  

The last time he was home was May 5. Grayson took the six steps from his bed to the living room couch and sat with his father, Eric. The two men cried as Grayson admitted, “I don’t want to be here anymore.” The following day, he headed up the road to Charlotte for the PGA Tour's Wells Fargo Championship. He delivered one of his best performances of the year with a tie for 10th. 

Twelve days later, Grayson Murray went into his Florida rental and didn’t come out. He was 30 years old.  

His mom, Terry, stands in the empty bedroom alongside her husband and pulls out a photo from fifth grade. Her boy is with a friend, the two dressed in Halloween costumes with an inscription from an 11-year-old Grayson: “I’m going to be a professional golfer when I grow up.” Eric and Terry understand what the golf world thought of Grayson, the guy whose talent and heart was occasionally obscured by the missteps made online and in real life. They know the truth, which is far more complicated. There were days when Grayson would zip up his black hoodie and try to keep the world out because that world was too much for him. It’s a struggle faced by millions yet one widely misunderstood. It’s why the Murrays need to share Grayson’s story.

His game was never in doubt. At 16, he was the second-youngest person to make a cut on the then-Nationwide Tour. He was the second player behind Tiger Woods to win the prestigious Junior World three consecutive years. The knock on Grayson Murray was his play was overshadowed by his behavior. He had a temper, a reputation for throwing and breaking clubs, but what some saw as brash could also be explained by anxiety. Grayson didn't like the attention that came with winning, once telling his dad he was more comfortable finishing in the top 10. The problem grew in his teenage years. Grayson was such a perfectionist, he once worked on a school project for two weeks, only to toss it before it was due because he deemed it unsatisfactory. His instructor Ted Kiegiel, who also coaches Webb Simpson and Chesson Hadley, recalls Grayson gave up baseball because he was tired of his team’s first baseman dropping the ball, at one point running from second to first to make the out himself.  

“He was passionate,” says Grayson’s sister, Erica. “It was always directed at himself, though. He never purposefully tried to upset anyone.”

At an early age Grayson put an inordinate emphasis on golf. When his uncle would invite him to putt in the garage, he would fully dress in his golf outfit. There was the time he ran into a group of N.C. State golfers at nearby Wildwood Green G.C., who were astonished by the shots this stout middle-schooler was hitting. Grayson explained, “Well, this is my job.” 

When he wasn’t playing, there was an unseen burden Grayson could not shed. Grayson often felt down and believed no one cared about him.

“You could tell he had these emotional swings” says Jeff Maness, a Raleigh C.C. member who met Grayson when he was 15.  Maness would hear members and club workers chirping about Grayson’s behavior, failing to understand what was really going on. “That feeling would manifest in ways he couldn’t control.”  

Grayson went through a gamut of tests for attention, development, emotional and psychological disorders in his teenage years. There was never a clear result or answer to explain what was boiling beneath. Then at the 2014 Southern Amateur, Murray was in the lead when he hit a shot near the woods. Suddenly he had trouble pulling back the golf club. He felt dizzy and later described to Maness that “everything went black.” Despite a potential win just holes away, Murray walked off the course. There was no denying something was wrong. He was diagnosed with social anxiety, which explained his worries of embarrassment and depression in the face of judgment from others.  

“Social anxiety can run the gamut, from where people don’t feel comfortable in a social setting to having full-blown panic attacks, where a person stops leaving their home and may resort to Mal-adaptive behaviors such as excessive drinking,” says Dr. Ryan Davis, a performance coach at the Center for Athletic Performance Enhancement, a facility that works with many PGA Tour players.  

The phrase “panic attacks” doesn’t explain the gravity. Dr. Michael Lardon, a clinical psychiatrist who also works with several PGA Tour players and is a consultant at the United States Olympic Training Center, says physical symptoms can be severe enough to be confused with a heart attack.

Grayson's precarious state was disrupted further after an accident in the fall of 2014. He was riding his bike home from a morning workout at Arizona State University when his jacket got caught in the front wheel, sending him spiraling over the handlebars headfirst onto the pavement. He was admitted to a local hospital and later released, but his eyesight remained blurry, and for months Grayson’s behavior became more erratic. Even when he was struggling, Grayson always had energy, but now he was perpetually tired to the point of needing daily naps. The downturns were quicker and longer, and at the bottom the moods were worse. Eric sent Grayson’s MRI from the accident to a traumatic brain injury department at the University of North Carolina, and it was revealed that Grayson was using just 20 percent of the right side of his brain. 

“That was the beginning of the fatalism,” Eric Murray says. “The worse it got, the more he talked, and the thing he kept saying over and over was, ‘I don’t think anyone can help me.’” 

Grayson drank as a teenager, no different from what other kids at school were doing. However, the cadences and rhythm of the tour—prolonged bouts of isolation on the road, a game marked by inconsistency and failure—are conducive to drinking becoming habitual. This is what friends and family saw with Grayson, a pattern they say became more worrisome when paired with his anxiety and the medication he took to treat it. Even then, Grayson could play. He progressed quickly, capturing the 2017 Barbasol Championship in his rookie year on the PGA Tour. It was everything else that he struggled to navigate. 
 

Multiple stops on tour are near casinos, and afternoons in the gaming pits would often turn into late nights and early mornings for Grayson. He told Maness it served as a distraction to what he was feeling inside. Grayson estimated that he lost more than $400,000 on gambling in 2017 alone.  

“He didn’t like being on the road,” Erica says. “He was a homebody, he got his energy from family and friends. Being stuck in hotel rooms, [away] from people he could trust, did a number on him.”

Recognizing the gambling and partying was becoming a problem, Grayson reached out to Austin Smith, his best friend since the second grade, to serve as his travel companion for a year. “I had an idea what was going on,” says Smith, who took a sabbatical from Fidelity Investments to be with Grayson. “I just didn’t know how bad it was until I got out there.”  

Smith said he lost count of how many times Grayson tried to fire him. Smith proudly points to a cutback on gambling—”He only lost $20,000”—in his 15 months living with Grayson on the road. Grayson’s binge drinking continued, however, sometimes during PGA Tour rounds. “He just couldn’t stop,” Smith says.  

And Smith couldn’t stop him. Grayson got mean when he drank. He was 6-foot-1, 200 pounds; trying to corral him was futile. According to Smith, the two came to blows at the 2018 Waste Management Phoenix Open, a fight that left both men banged up.

When Grayson wouldn’t drink, he would get the shakes from withdrawal. He’d also sleep for alarming lengths. After an early round he’d be in bed by 5 p.m., then not wake up until an hour before his afternoon tee time the following day. If golf, and the anticipation of the next round, helped sustain him, missed cuts sent him spinning. Because he booked rooms through the weekend and departure flights for Sunday night, a missed cut meant an open weekend of temptations. 

“It may seem hard to couple a high-achieving and functioning person with [anxiety and depression], but that prevalence is the same, if not greater, with professional athletes,” says Dr. Lardon. “Because males especially have this macho attitude in sports, it can continue because it remains stigmatized.”  

In July 2021, Eric and Kevin Canning, Grayson's agent and close friend, traveled with Grayson to the Betty Ford Center in Minnesota, where Grayson stayed for a month, but there were regressions. In 2022, he had a near-death experience at the tour’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship when his scooter crashed into oncoming traffic. He suffered a busted-up knee and 50 stitches, half of which were on his face. The following spring, Grayson shot an opening-round 68 at the 2023 Mexico Open, then returned to the hotel, drinking by the pool and playing beach volleyball. The following morning, his jitters were so severe that he had to chug alcohol before teeing off just to stop shaking. He shot 79, missed the cut and locked himself in his room, gripped by a four-day anxiety attack. 

The bouts with alcohol, gambling and anxiety spawned other problems. He suffered back issues, fell out of shape and eventually lost his card. He had several well-publicized tiffs on Twitter, which included a public rebuke of the PGA Tour for failing to provide help for his addictions. In the aftermath, Grayson would return to his team with a dose of remorse for causing a fuss. The more mercurial his behavior became, the greater the toll it took on the people who loved him.

“Listen, it wasn’t always easy being Grayson’s buddy,” Smith says. “He would take you to hell and back and put you through the ringer.” 

Kiegiel says Grayson never stepped out of line with him. “It’s when he’d leave, or when golf would go bad, that the other guy, the other Grayson, would come barreling in.”  

Adds Maness: “You were always worried about that late-night phone call you don’t want to get.”  

There was no easy answer on how to help. The team tried different avenues to get him where he wanted to go, yet all roads seemed to lead back to where they started. According to Eric and Terry, to hover over Grayson was to risk pushing him further into isolation. Leaving Grayson on his island didn’t feel right, either.  

“Some of the harder times were when things would be going well. You get your hopes up,” says his dad. “Then … [shakes head] … it was always a fight for all of us.” 

 In many corners of the game, Grayson was only trouble. Those around him knew better. 

Growing up, Grayson was friends with Clancy Waugh, whose father Seth would become CEO of the PGA of America. Once, the Waughs were driving Grayson and Clancy (then in middle school) home from a tournament when they saw a homeless man at a stoplight. Grayson wanted to give him the only $5 he had, and when the car started moving, Grayson yelled until they turned around so that Grayson could pass him the bill. 

At another tournament, a helicopter dad brought his son to tears chewing him out for a poor showing. Grayson picked up the kid’s bag and caddied for him on the remaining holes. Another time, in a golf course restaurant, an overserved patron was talking smack to a junior golfer. “Those are my people,” Grayson intervened, and challenged the drunkard to a $200-per-hole match. After losing the first six holes, the man walked off.

“He would not put up with bullies,” Smith says. “You could be his buddy or a complete stranger. If he saw someone treated the wrong way, he would make it right.”  

“Grayson had an innate sense of when someone was hurting or uncomfortable,” Terry says.

Grayson kept this as a pro. Visiting a child battling cancer in the hospital, he asked where the kid’s parents were. A nurse informed him the family had transportation issues. That afternoon, Grayson bought the family a car. He would show up to fundraisers and quietly cut a check to organizers, asking them only to not publicize his name. He would take the free clothes, shoes and apparel he received from sponsors and send them to his high school, asking them to be disbursed to students who were in need. “Kids were a soft spot,” Erica says. “Whatever would be going on in his world would fall away if a kid needed attention, be it his nephews or someone he just met.”

A PGA Tour caddie who asked not to be named said Grayson bought him dinners when Grayson discovered he was struggling to cover expenses. Grayson carried cash to give to those he’d see on street corners begging for help. When he saw packs of stray dogs, he would give $500 to someone on his team to get the dogs food.  

John Sawin, the senior vice president of golf at Pebble Beach Resorts, met Grayson when Sawin caddied for him at the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion. Sawin worried Grayson might be spending and giving beyond his means, and attempted to have a conversation about long-term planning.

“He had this mindset he was always going to make more, that he was just one week away from refilling his bank account,” Sawin remembers. “His heart was so big, and he was so mindful of others, that he knew others didn’t have that opportunity, so what little he did have, he gave.”  

Paul Dickens is the head professional at Wakefield Plantation, a former TPC property in Raleigh that’s often utilized by tour pros. Few were more giving with their time, Dickens says, than Grayson.  

“Sometimes those guys just want to do their work, put their headphones on, don’t want to be bothered, which I understand,” Dickens says. “Grayson always made himself available to kids. It wasn’t just, ‘Hey, ask me anything you want.’ He would proactively reach out to the participants of our junior program, knowing they might be nervous to talk to him.”

One of the juniors was future PGA Tour player Akshay Bhatia.  

“He always was very caring when it came to my golf,” Bhatia says. “He was so impressive to play with, and he always helped me with certain things when it came to pro golf. I really appreciated the time he gave to me.” 

During his stay at Betty Ford, Grayson learned about the finances of addiction treatment centers. Not all insurance companies provide coverage, and those that do force open-ended recoveries into unrealistic time frames. Grayson could afford to pay for his hospitalization out of pocket but saw others that weren’t as fortunate. He wrote to his parents and team; he wanted to start a foundation that would assist those seeking help that couldn’t afford it.

He stayed in contact with those he met at rehab and made himself available to those going through similar hardships. Andrew Bullard, a member at Raleigh C.C., said it was Grayson’s openness and encouragement after rehab that helped him confront his own substance abuse.

“It’s hard to face that you’re doing something wrong, even when deep down you know it,” Bullard says. “Courage, that’s what he gave me, because it’s scary. Your whole world is about to be shaken up. When I went through what I did, Grayson was there every step of the way.” 

Grayson and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan had their differences, including a confrontation at a players’ meeting in the days following the surprise June 6, 2023 framework agreement between the tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, with Murray chewing out Monahan for doing the deal in private and betraying the players’ trust. A week later, Monahan suffered a medical episode that required hospitalization. When Monahan reopened his phone, the first message he saw was from Grayson: Jay, I just want you to get healthy.   

“I never met anyone who went out of their way for other people like Grayson,” says former NFL quarterback Mike Glennon, who lived three houses from Grayson. “He didn’t just remember names; he remembered your kids and parents’ names, and who they were.”  

Grayson’s friends and family were aware of this spirit, but they had no idea how much Grayson gave. After his death, multitudes reached out with stories of Grayson’s generosity. Carolina Hurricanes All-Star defenseman Jaccob Slavin discovered Grayson had cut his charity a five-figure donation without telling him. Numerous mini-tour players recalled Grayson reaching out over text or social media, letting them know he knew what it was like to struggle for status but to keep chasing their dream. At Wakefield, Dickens found that Grayson had given his Masters yardage book (a treasure not even caddies always get to keep) to a kid he had just met on the putting green. 

“Spend five minutes with Grayson and you know he’s good,” says PGA Tour veteran Martin Flores. “You’d see some of the antics that he does, and you go, ‘That’s just not the guy I know.’”  

“Early on, yeah, he had his issues,” says Barry Williams, a caddie on the PGA Tour for more than two decades, “but he had a heart of gold. The only person he was truly hurting was himself.”  

Grayson had shelved the booze after the four-day panic attack in Mexico. He proceeded to win twice on the Korn Ferry Tour to regain his PGA Tour card. “When he started having the revival, I remember him lifting up those big mittens,” Maness says. “He told me, ‘I got my hands back.’”

He worked out with Austin on a regular basis and dropped much of the extra weight. An on-again, off-again relationship with his girlfriend grew serious as they moved in together and got engaged. He returned to the Christian faith he had mostly strayed from as an adult, attending weekly Bible studies in Raleigh and with fellow tour players on the road. 

“I saw someone who was humble, who wanted to discover how he could be a servant to others,” says Slavin, who was in a weekly study group with Grayson. “He was trying to better himself, but also how to take those learnings and spread the joy."

On Oct. 1, 2023, Grayson turned 30. He rented a private jet for Austin and invited several friends for a weekend trip to the Bahamas. They had a chef, butler and a private villa, and went swimming with the dolphins. Grayson paid for everything. “The thing was, it wasn’t a celebration for him,” Austin says. “This was his way of saying, ‘You were by my side, and I will never forget it.’” 

In Grayson’s first start in 2024 at the Sony Open, he went into Sunday with the 54-hole lead and birdied the 18th hole twice—the first to enter a playoff against Keegan Bradley and Ben An, the second off a 40-footer to win the Hawaii event. The comeback was complete; the win earned Grayson a spot in the Masters field for the first time in his career.  

The team rented three houses for their guests at Augusta. During the early portion of the week, Grayson met a 7-year-old hitting balls at a driving range near the rentals. Grayson invited him to the Par 3 Contest and surprised everyone—including some Masters officials—when he invited the kid under the ropes for several holes. It wasn’t his best golf, but he played well enough to make the weekend. Everyone agrees they had never seen Grayson happier.  

“For most of his adult life, Grayson needed us,” Maness says. “When Grayson made it to the Masters, and everything was going well, Eric and I thought, ‘He made it. All the efforts and sacrifices have finally got him to a stable place.’” 

In the Murrays’ living room, above the couch, is a poster of Grayson and his dad standing in front of the Augusta National clubhouse, their faces lit up and arms around each other. 

Says Eric, fighting back tears: “For a second, it seemed like the storm had finally passed.” 

Shortly after the Masters, the wedding was called off. (Grayson’s ex-fiancée declined an interview for this story.) Following the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, Grayson sequestered himself to his parents’ house and rarely emerged from his bedroom. The team called Grayson’s caddie, Jay Green, to spend the following week in Raleigh with him, hoping his presence would coax him out of the funk. Austin checked in on a daily basis.

“I remember going over and sitting on his bed. All he kept saying was, ‘No one cares about me, and no one will care when I’m gone,’” Smith says. “He couldn’t accept how everyone was here for him.” 

The following week Grayson played golf with Maness, Green and Bhatia, and started preparing for his next start at the Wells Fargo Championship, a PGA Tour signature event. Eric wondered if Grayson should drop out, but he also knew golf gave his son purpose and distraction. As soon as he got to Charlotte, Grayson seemed to snap to life. “It was like the last two weeks didn’t happen,” Terry Murray says, adding that “Grayson treated me like a queen that entire week” for Mother’s Day. His T-10 finish was his first top-20 since winning the Sony four months prior.

Kiegiel says it was the best he had seen Grayson play. At the end of Sunday's round, Kiegiel told Grayson he was ready to win a major the next week at the PGA Championship at Valhalla. 

Maness, though, sensed that Grayson was still hurting, so he asked Grayson if he wanted to come up to Louisville. Grayson said he was fine and wanted the time alone. What happened that week is mostly unknown. Grayson did attend Bible study with a group that included Scottie Scheffler. He also allegedly made an out-of-state run to a casino. He made the cut and finished T-43. 

“I got to see numerous good days, where he was happy, blessed, and confident. On the other hand, I was with him when days were hard,” says Green, “days that felt impossible, like he could not do anything right in his mind, and felt he was letting those who cheered for him and loved him down.” 

From Louisville, Grayson flew to Dallas for the Charles Schwab Challenge. Flores said he seemed upbeat early in the week. After opening with a two-under 68, three shots off the lead, Grayson called his brother in Aruba. Cameron went there every May, but Grayson could never make the timing work because of golf.  

“We talked on Thursday. He said, ‘One more good tournament, and I’ll be down.’” Cameron recalled. “That place is my escape, and I was hoping it would give him the same peace.” 

Grayson did not complete his second round at Colonial. He was five over through 16 holes when he withdrew, citing illness. Peter Malnati, who played with Grayson that day, sensed something was wrong, asking a PGA Tour official to do a wellness check on Grayson. After exchanging goodbyes with Green, Grayson left the property.  

Grayson took a flight from Dallas to Atlanta, then a flight from Atlanta to Palm Beach. He sat next to a woman named Maggie, who noticed the young man beside her was jittery. Maggie later told the Murrays that she and Grayson discussed their work and faith, and when they landed Maggie offered to drive Grayson to his Jupiter residence. Maggie, whose husband works in the motorsport industry, invited Grayson over to try their racing simulator. 

“Even until the very end,” Terry Murray says, “he was surrounded by angels that were looking out for him.” 

Grayson made plans with Maggie to visit. That was the last time anyone saw Grayson alive. 

“It’s tempting to wonder, all this time we put into him, was it for nothing?” Maness asks. “Did we fail?"

“I had to open a Google document to write Grayson’s eulogy,” Smith said. “Just above it were the words I had for his best man’s speech that I had put down less than a month before.” 

Eric Murray has been having panic attacks. He wonders what might have happened if he kept Grayson on the couch in early May, if he was able to intercept him after pulling out of Colonial. “So many people worried about him. What could I have done to let him know that?”

Those who grapple with suicide view it as freedom, a way to end the pain. But those left behind can be trapped in a loop, questioning what went wrong and what they could have done.

“That’s what makes this hard. Often the answer is clear in hindsight,” Kiegiel adds. “Half a year later, there is no clear answer.”

To Smith, the only solace is that his friend fought as long and as hard as he did. “The hand he got dealt, almost anyone else would have been a derelict. He became one of the best golfers in the world. I was so happy he got this last year. It was the best I ever saw him. He deserved it.” 

“He was my superhero,” his dad says. “Those weren’t character flaws. Those demons, that affliction, they were trying to destroy him. He would often say, ‘Why me, dad? Why did this have to happen to me?’ And yet he kept going, and he was open about it all, willing to take the hits to his reputation and image, knowing it was OK as long as it helped someone in his same position.”

Grayson’s family and friends are channeling their hurt into a foundation that will aim to spread awareness about the mental-health battles so many fight. Exactly how they will do so is open-ended. They may fund and support existing entities. Eric and Terry are interested in going to middle schools to address anxiety problems before they get out of control, and Terry and Grayson’s sister Erica have taken college courses on how to best run the foundation. At its core, the goal of the foundation is to mirror the spirit of Grayson. 

“As much as it hurts right now, what Grayson stood for and what he wanted to do, this foundation has a chance to save so many lives, which is how we can save him,” Erica says.

What the foundation does have is a motto, penned from Grayson’s own hand during a raw day in rehab when truth flowed easy. It’s inscribed on his gravestone in the Murray family plot, a nod to his outlook on life and his compass for treating others, even if he couldn’t do the same for the man in the mirror: Be Kind To One Another. 

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. Learn more about or donate to the Grayson Murray Foundation here.