Playing on in the Madeira Island Open on Sunday after the tragic and untimely death of Ian McGregor may well have been what the popular Zimbabwean-Scottish caddie would have wanted.
But it still doesn’t make it right.
“Zim Mac”, who had looped for a number of players and had just teamed up with Alastair Forsyth, suffered a fatal heart attack on the ninth hole at Santo de Sierra on Sunday. Play was immediately suspended but restarted later in the day, after “consultations between players and officials”.
Clearly it was far from a unanimous decision to play on. Several players and caddies tweeted to honour Mac, who was just 52, but many expressed dismay that the tournament hadn’t been cancelled.
Forsyth, clearly shocked and crestfallen by the tragedy, said in a statement released by the tour that he spoke to chief executive George O’Grady in the aftermath and added that Mac, who he’d known for 15 years, would have wanted them to keep playing.
I certainly don’t blame Al or any of the other players in the field for playing on. O’Grady and the Tour’s part in the decision, however, is entirely another matter.
It had already been a fraught weekend, although nothing on the scale of Mac’s tragic death. Fog had reduced the tournament to 36 holes, and players and caddies had spent a great deal of frustrating time hanging around waiting to play.
Madeira is not one of the tour’s biggest events by any means, but it has a huge importance for a good amount of players who play in it. It’s a potential win and exemption, and therefore a career-changer, for a number of guys trying to establish or re-establish themselves as professional tour players.
This is trivial compared to a man’s life, of course, but it’s still significant in their thought processes. I don’t blame the players especially Forsyth, for whom it must have been an acutely emotional time for the decision they made, as they were in no position to make a truly rational one.
And it wasn’t their decision to make, anyway. It’s at times like these when administrators have to take a lead.
Sport doesn’t take place in a vacuum where real life is not allowed to intrude. The proper reaction to Sunday’s tragedy was to call the players off course immediately and abandon the tournament out of respect to Mac’s memory.
When a fan died at the Morton-Queen of the South game earlier this season, they abandoned the match immediately. That was the proper, respectful action in the circumstances, and it wasn’t as if the fan was actually involved on the field of play.
O’Grady, as the premier authority on tour, should have ordered that the tournament was abandoned. In this case what might be construed by some misguided people as an over-reaction is far better than bringing the tour into disrepute.
George’s leadership has been called into question in recent months. This unforgivably crass and insensitive decision hardly helps his case.