HONG KONG, 7 April 2019:
Malaysian golfer Arie Irawan died of “apparent natural causes” today in his hotel room on the Chinese resort island of Hainan, the PGA tour said in a statement. He was 28.
Arie, who turned professional in 2013 and won two events on the Asian Development Tour in 2015, had missed the halfway cut at the Sanya Championship, the second event on the PGA Tour China Series.
“The PGA Tour and the China Golf Association grieve at this loss of one of our members and share sincere condolences with Arie’s wife, Marina, and his parents, Ahmad and Jeny,” the PGA tour statement added.
“When something of this magnitude occurs in the golf world, we all grieve at the same time.
“Out of respect for the family, officials cancelled the final round of the Sanya Championship, the tournament becoming a 54-hole event.”
The coroner’s report had not been completed, the statement said.
Arie’s golf career was interrupted in 2016 when he was involved in an accident on a moped and sidelined for several months. He was ranked 1,366th in the world this week.
He married Marina Malek last May and she sometimes worked as his caddie, even if Arie admitted that she did not know much about golf.
“If I make a bad score she will say ‘it is okay, it is okay’,” he reportedly said last year.
“She keeps me calm, relaxed and happy so I just go out there and play golf. That helps me a lot. She has always been there for me through the bad and good times.”
Arie Irawan turned professional in April 2013 and in the following season, he played on the Asian Development Tour and earned his tour card for the 2015 Asian Tour after a 6th-place finish on the Asian Development Tour’s Order of Merit.
In January 2015, he won his first Official World Golf Ranking points event at the PGM Sime Darby Harvard Championship on the Asian Development Tour and with it, Irawan became the highest ranked Malaysian golfer in the world rankings
Meanwhile, Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman in a Twitter post said that he would asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help in bringing home Arie’s body.
– Reuters, Bernama