SPORTS
ILLUSTRATED
SI.COM
APRIL 2022
75hourlong commute to work. This time, Ashley ref lected
not on all that she had, but on all she might have lost.
Rumors were swirling. Concerned phone calls were
made. And all of it propelled Ashley toward Pinetree
in a panic. Something went wrong. There was a shooting.
Gene’s been hurt. Now Ashley was calling her husband
again and again, and he never answered.
If there was an active shooter, she thought desperately,
maybe Gene was hiding and couldn’t pick up. Maybe he
was busy keeping other people safe. There was still hope,
she felt, when at 4:49 p.m. she sent her husband a plead-
ing text: Please answer....Please, please text me that you’re
O.K. If you see this, I love you more than you know, Genie.
Ashley called the pro shop, the tennis shop, the kind
nurse who played at the club and whom she’d once met
at a function—and the phones rang endlessly. Finally,
digging through old emails, she found Nycum’s number.
At last, a voice on the other end.
“What do you know?” Nycum asked.
“I know Gene has been shot.”
“What else do you know?”
“That’s all.”
Silence.
“Is he alive?” Ashley pleaded. “Is he alive?”
“No,” Nycum mustered. “I’m so sorry.”
A
RRIVING AT PINETREE, Ashley demanded to see
Gene. She wanted to sprint past the police who’d
arrived, to see for herself that Nycum was wrong, but
she was intercepted by a club member, Loretta Byrne,
who witnessed the damage wrought by two bullets, and
who begged Ashley, over and over, to spare herself the
image. “That [would have been] a picture she wouldn’t
be able to get out,” Byrne says.
Eventually Ashley was permitted to walk to the back
of Pinetree’s expansive clubhouse, where she settled
atop A-frame steps that afforded a view of the driving
range and, to the left, the crime scene in the distance.
The par-4 10th hole is a slight dogleg left. The right
side of the green is guarded by a large pond and a pair
of bunkers. Ashley could see that one of those bunkers
had trapped a massive white pickup, left teetering on
the edge. Beyond that, the tableau was tough to read,
save for one unmistakable detail, visible even hundreds
of yards away: the bright-red pants that Gene had been
wearing that morning as he bounded downstairs. He’d
looked so damn handsome, she remembers thinking as
she kissed him goodbye.G
ENE WAS EBULLIENT as he st rolled up to Pinet ree
at 9 that morning, his red pants matched with an
American f lag golf shirt. The place buzzed with life:
families packing the Olympic-sized swimming pool,
workers assembling tables for a dinner buffet. Inside
the pro shop, Gene bumped into 32-year-old Tanner Farr
and asked the assistant pro about his progress in the
PGA management program. Farr had just moved up a
level, and Gene offered some encouragement. “Stay at it.”
A few hours later, another assistant, 25-year-old
Harrison Bryant, punched in to man the golf shop. And it
was Bryant, through the window behind the register, who
first spotted the white Ram 3500 near the 10th green.
This was at 2 p.m.; he assumed the fireworks crew had
come early to set up. But when he glanced back again,
after a few phone calls, he was surprised to see the
same vehicle—and now it was caught on the lip of the
front bunker.
Bryant mentioned this to Gene, who grabbed a cart
and headed straight off. Siller had grown accustomed
to chasing teenagers and fishermen from the course;or perhaps, in this case, someone needed help. He was
just doing his job when Bryant, through binoculars in
the pro shop, saw him pull up to the truck and appear
to engage with the driver.
It all happened in the time it takes to field a call. The
phone rang again. Bryant answered. He hung up, turned
back, and from afar saw Gene sprawled on the ground.
There was a surge of audible horror from the members
on the driving range—and then someone sprinted into
the shop, screaming for Bryant to call 911.B
YRNE, THE CLUB MEMBER, had just ordered
lunch in the small restaurant abutting Pinetree’s pro
shop when she saw the truck moored on the bunker
and heard the shouts from the range: The members
there heard five or six gunshots, saw Gene fall and
watched a man sprint into the course’s dense woods.
A nurse by profession, Byrne scrambled to a golf cart
and rushed toward the scene, where she found GeneThere was still hope, Ashley felt, when at
4:49 p.m. she texted her husband: IF YOU SEE THIS,
I LOVE YOU MORE THAN YOU KNOW, GENIE.