Kai Fieberg Costa Rica Open celebrates a life in death

If you hang around golf enough, you’ll find enough stories to break your heart. Hanging around the European Tour site, I followed a link to the co-sanctioned (Tour de las Americas and Euro Challenge Tour) event in Costa Rica, the Kai Fieberg Costa Rican Open.

The event would have eventually been named for Kai Fieberg in life, given all that he did to promote the championship. Tragically, the event will now bear his name forever, in homage to yet another man who died too young.

For each Eli Callaway, who makes it to a ripe old age and passes on, surrounded by loved ones, there is a Lewis Chitengwa. Chitengwa died in 2001 at the hands of a fast-moving strain of meningitis. That he had shot 67 on the Canadian Tour only hours before added to the frailty of human existence. For each Moe Norman, there is a Kai Fieberg. From the internet reports, we know little about the circumstances of the accident. On the personal side, a wife is now a widow, and two children now miss their father.

This week, when the AT&T and the Johnny Walker are contested, separated by half a world, consider following the normally-minor Costa Rican Open. This year and forever on, its promoter is separated by a lifetime.