Caddie Rushed to Hospital After Collapsing at Pebble Beach
Note: This story has been updated to reflect new reporting from on the ground at Pebble Beach.
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – A caddie for amateur Geoff Couch, a local businessman, collapsed in the 11th fairway at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at Pebble Beach Golf Links in Friday’s second round.
The caddie, whose name has been withheld, was given CPR first by an unidentified spectator who was on the rope line. An officer from Cal Fire then took over the life-saving procedure. The caddie was eventually removed by ambulance, which took some time because the 11th is not an easy entry or exit point on the golf course. Eventually the caddie was taken to Montage Health in Monterey.
“With my perspective, it seemed like we'd lost him,” said Lukas Nelson, a CEO and the second amateur in the group, who was the only one of the three remain participants willing to speak. “I turned around, he's on the ground and ran over to him and turned him over and he didn't have a lot of color.”
The two PGA Tour players in the group—Beau Hossler and Max McGreevy—were visibly shaken according to Webb Simpson, who was in the group behind them and saw the scene unfold up ahead. Simpson went to the side of his Tour brethren to see if he could help.
“They looked pretty shaken up,” Simpson said of his two fellow pros. “Both said he didn't – how can you immediately go back to playing golf when that happens? And so, I think, they did the right thing. But they looked pretty shaken up as anyone would be.”
According to Gary Young, the Chief Referee for the event, both players were visibly shaken and emotionally distraught, requiring what Young called unprecedented action.
The PGA Tour released a statement following the emergency:
Under the rules of golf, if a player has an injury or illness, a period of time, usually 10 or 15 minutes, is set aside to allow the player to regroup before they resume play. Groups behind would play through.
In this circumstance, neither player was injured or ill, but according to Young they were unwilling to continue.
After discussions with the players and consultations with the PGA Tour Crisis Management Team and the tournament rules committee, Young decided to let the players leave the golf course to gather themselves.
During the 45-minute period between leaving the course and returning to finish their rounds, the two players and their remaining amateur partner went back to the Pro-Am area to decompress and were joined by both a rules official and Steve Johns, the AT&T tournament director.
“I mean, emotionally, it's like, you know, there's just nothing like that,” Nelson said of the difficulty of returning to play after what he had witnessed. “I didn't want to keep playing."
Unfortunately, incidents of caddie’s collapsing or dying is not entirely unprecedented.
In 2021, two caddies died on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica tour. in June, Jose Edgar Preciado suffered a fatal heart attack at his hotel after the second round of the Holcim Columbia Classic. Four months later, Alberto Olguin collapsed on the 9th tee during the first round of the Series Final. Olguin was given CPR on the course but died in the hospital.
In 2016, the first round of a Ladies European Tour event in Dubai was suspended when caddie Max Zechmann collapsed on the 13th fairway and died in the hospital.
At the 2014 Madeira Island Open on the European Tour, caddie Ian MacGregor collapsed and died on the 9th hole while working for Alastair Forsyth.