During Friday's second round play at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, a caddie for one of the amateurs unfortunately collapsed as the group of PGA Tour players, Beau Hossler and Max McGreevy, walked up the 11th hole.
Thankfully, medics at the tournament performed CPR and emergency maneuvers on the caddie, who hasn't been named due to privacy concerns. He eventually put on a stretcher and taken away by an ambulance. Not long after, the PGA Tour released a statement that revealed the caddie had been rushed to Montage Health for evaluation.
Hossler and Nelson talk on the 13th green during the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am
Visibly shaken by the ordeal, the group were allowed to step aside and return to the clubhouse, with the statement adding that: "At the direction of the PGA Tour Rules Committee, the players in that group paused play during the medical emergency and will be allowed to warm up and resume their rounds shortly."
According to Sports Illustrated, Lukas Nelson, a CEO and the second amateur in the group stated that: “With my perspective, it seemed like we'd lost him. 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.”
Harry Higgs, who was in the group behind Hossler and McGreevy, described what he saw on the 11th, with the American stating: "I was standing on the tee. They looked like they were 250 yards away, maybe even less, 200 yards away, and they were hammering away CPR on the gentleman. It was weird. We teed off on 11 and once I got up there and saw the group that the caddie was in, they were off to the side and they were obviously very emotional. Hugging each other. I called a rules official over and just wanted to like, Is this okay? I don't want to be rude and keep going. It's like golf doesn't matter at all now, right?"
Higgs currently sits three shots back of leader, Kurt Kitayama
The incident at Pebble Beach occurs just weeks after American football player, Damar Hamlin, collapsed and suffered a cardiac arrest during the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals game.
Speaking after his second round, Higgs, who was eventually told that the caddie's situation had improved, added that it “takes a weight off your shoulders", with the 31-year-old stating that "none of us have ever had to deal with that. No one in the NFL had ever had to deal with what happened, what, six, seven weeks ago. So there is no playbook. There is nothing to do.”
For the rest of the round, Higgs said the remainder of day had an eerie vibe, commenting that “there was no energy, no juice on any of the holes coming in. Fortunately, we got some good news and kept going. I hope there's more good news in the coming hours and days. Just a very difficult and kind of a first and, hopefully, a last.”
