As darkness descends: Shane Lowry on Tour's highs and lows, demons and distress

After the darkness of Grayson Murray's suicide, one is more convinced than ever that professional sports could be a much better place with a few more Shane Lowrys in it. A more honest place and a less lonely place at the same time

WALKING TALL: Shane Lowry buzzing as he contends in the final round of the PGA Championship at Valhalla in Louisville, Kentucky. Pic: Scott Taetsch via Getty Images

Shane Lowry spent last weekend with his family in downtown New York, off the block, off the clock. Yet even there, in the anonymity of the metropolis, the dark news found him.

That’s the thing with suicide and its instantly insidious trajectory, its you’re-never-gonna-be-the-same creeping journey. It can navigate its way up and then down the concrete canyons of the sleepless city just as easily as it trickles down a silent country lane. As easily as it breaks into a black-dark room at an unholy hour where a notification pings politely, a phone lights up blindingly and all is changed, changed utterly.