Meet Jay McLuen: the golfer pronounced dead twice but now ready for the PGA Tour

[ASFN Admin]

When you have been officially classed as dead twice in seven minutes and still recovered to resume your job as a golf professional, you can fairly assume that you know how to jump back from adversity. It is with this self-belief that Jay McLuen will on Thursday start his first PGA Tour event since lockdown and, more notably, since watching his wife defying her own mortality when buried under a tractor mower. This tale of a journeyman like no other will surely inspire every reader to root for him in this week’s Sanderson Farms Championship in Mississippi, where he will tee up in the $6.5 million (£5 million) event alongside the likes of Henrik Stenson and Sergio Garcia and rising stars in the world’s top 30 such as Scottie Scheffler and Sung-jae Im. Down in 1,989th in the rankings, McLuen battled through qualifying on Monday, a day after telling himself it might be the moment to hang up the spikes. “I’m 40, have been out here grinding for nigh on two decades and have been playing so badly and thought to myself, ‘How much more can I take?’ ” the American told Telegraph Sport. “But I must have a streak of stubbornness running through my Scottish heritage, because I decided, ‘I’m not quitting.’ After all, what we’ve been through in the last few years makes the trials of pro life seem pretty low beer.” Best to start at McLuen’s home in November 2017. It was Saturday morning and his thoughts were on yet another crack at PGA Tour qualifying school the following Wednesday. “There was no warning whatsoever, been healthy my whole life, but the lights were on and suddenly then went off,” he recalled. “The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital on the Tuesday and saying to my wife, ‘Hey, we gotta get out of here – it’s Q-School tomorrow.’ ” Reye told her husband he was going nowhere and filled him in on the previous 72 hours. “She had been upstairs having a shower at 8.15am and I had our toddler, Max, in my arms and was watching TV with our daughter, Miller, who was then four. Out of nowhere, I collapsed and had a seizure. First Reye thought I was joking around with Miller, but she quickly realised this was no act and rang 911. The paramedics were apparently there in five to six minutes.

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