There are days when professional athletes can’t get out bed.

The knees are nagging worse than ever before. The ankles are aching so bad the thought of swivelling to one side and having the feet touch the ground is too much. There’s no chance of the hip warming up in time before you need to be out the door that morning.

But they get up and go to work. It’s why they’re paid. No one bats an eyelid.

Yet could an athlete be considered brave if they didn’t get out of bed? Say, their body was hurting, but it was nothing compared to the agony of their mind, wrought with emotions of anxiety and emptiness even though they had been living the life they’d always aspired to? Even if it meant pulling out of competition mid-event?

THE DREAM TURNS INTO A NIGHTMARE

A mid-year PGA Tour event in Kentucky is unlikely to stop any sports fan in their tracks. For Australia’s Harrison Endycott, the week world golf’s most famous circus rolled into America’s horse country was when he knew he couldn’t take any more.

He didn’t get out of bed – and he finally asked for help.

“It just got to a point where my anxiety levels were so high, I was vomiting and being sick before tournaments and before rounds,” Endycott says. “I was sick all night (in Kentucky). I just couldn’t get out of bed.

“I just hated myself so badly, I didn’t want to be around anybody.”

Endycott rang his agent, Matt Broome, and they decided he wouldn’t go to the golf course. He withdrew from the Isco Championship on the morning of his second round.

For months on end, Endycott had been living what is assumed as every professional golfer’s dream as one of just a handful of Australians regularly playing against the likes of Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa, and cashing the cheques that come with it.

It’s perceived as a glamorous lifestyle, but the reality is far different. It’s endless overseas and interstate travel between tournaments, unappealing room service meals, and the stress of not making any money when you miss a cut.

If you didn’t find Endycott on the golf course in any given week, the chances are you would find him at a local bar, where he would prop it up for hours.

He was using alcohol as a coping mechanism, or “self medication” in his own words. It didn’t matter what night of the week it was or how early his morning tee time was, often he would just drink and drink and drink.

“How can you beat Rory McIlroy when you’re doing that? It wasn’t as if I wanted to go do that, it was my way of handling the stress of life,” he says.

“I was drinking to blackout levels after a missed cut. I would be in tears. I got in a very, very dark place with it.”

THE BREAKING POINT IN KENTUCKY

After the Kentucky tournament in July last year, Endycott almost vanished overnight from professional golf – and only now is speaking about his struggles for the first time.

The day of his WD, Endycott was urged to speak to the PGA Tour’s player relations team to seek immediate help.

He told them: “I was drunk last night and I’m drunk now. I need help. I don’t know how to think clearly, and I feel like I’m going to do something stupid. Please help me.”

Endycott’s path to the PGA Tour and the cusp of the world’s top 200 golfers a few years ago was hardly a straightforward one.

He had a glittering amateur career and then secured his PGA Tour card in 2022 via the secondary Korn Ferry Tour.

The Korn Ferry Tour is golf’s Bermuda triangle, a cosmopolitan melting pot of young up-and-comers trying to make it to the big leagues, and grizzled veterans trying to get back there. Most are stuck for years and then slowly fade away into obscurity.

But it also captured a beautiful moment when Endycott finally locked up his PGA Tour status, with his dad Brian flying over from Australia to be there.

They hugged and cried at what he’d achieved, but mostly because Endycott’s mother, Dianne, wasn’t there. She died from ovarian cancer when Harrison was just 15, largely keeping the details of her prognosis from the teenager.

Endycott took her death hard. He was angry, rebellious, skipped school, the lot.

“The cards I got dealt with growing up to this point, for a long time I felt like my life was like sitting at a blackjack table and I kept getting dealt 20 … and the dealer keeps getting 21 every single time,” he says.

“I had a lot of trauma as a kid. I had a lot of things that happened in my life that I never dealt with. I thought I was the unluckiest person in the world. I needed help with that.”

FINDING HELP AND A NEW PATH

Endycott is speaking about his own mental health battle, partly, because he was afraid of his family receiving a phone call like the one Grayson Murray’s parents had to receive in early 2024.

Endycott, 28, confronted his own condition at Kentucky just two months after Murray took his life.

The American had already won a PGA Tour event in early 2024 and was ranked inside the world’s top 60. He’d been open with his own mental health battle.

A week before he died, Endycott saw Murray on the putting green during practice for a PGA Tour stop.

“You wouldn’t have had a clue,” he says. Murray was found dead a day after withdrawing from a PGA Tour event in Texas.

“I was definitely in a place where that could have been me,” Endycott says.

“I was close to going down (a path) where my family received calls his family had to receive.”

After consulting the PGA Tour’s player relations team, Endycott was immediately booked in to see a therapist. He didn’t touch a golf club for almost four months, purely working on his mental health.

His first challenge was to get sober. He stayed that way well until this year, and only occasionally has a limited amount of alcohol now.

He found other pursuits to rewire his mind, mostly entailing health and fitness, where he now works out up to six times a week in the gym. He’s the fittest he’s ever been, enough for him to quietly make a return to professional golf last month on the Korn Ferry Tour.

He made his first PGA Tour start in almost a year at The CJ Cup Byron Nelson, won by world No.1 Scheffler, and will continue to be given starts under a medical exemption. Endycott didn’t survive the cut in Texas, but that didn’t mean he grabbed the nearest bottle either.

“A missed cut last year resulted in me sitting at a bar getting s---faced, feeling good about myself that way,” Endycott says. “But I’ve found the love of the game again. Results are part of the journey. I’m playing golf now because I love golf.

“Every week feels like a stepping stone now. A four o’clock alarm to go and play … I can’t wait for that. And I’ve learned it’s OK not to be OK. People will always listen.

“The second chance I’ve been given, whatever I do in life is always going to be filled with joy because of what I’ve dealt with.”

Lifeline (24-hour crisis line): 131 114

Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636 or beyondblue.org.au

Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800 or kidshelpline.com.au

Headspace: 1800 650 890 or headspace.org.au