The remarkable story of Sydney golfer Paul Geraghty, who suffered a heart attack on his final hole, took a wipe (and a life-saving trip to hospital) and still won the daily comp.
There are golf stories that sound exaggerated. Then there are tales that sound completely made up. What you are about to read is 100 percent true and might just be the frontrunner for golf’s most unlikely victor of 2026.
On a sticky Saturday in March at Beverley Park Golf Club in Sydney’s south, Paul Geraghty was standing on the 18th tee with 35 Stableford points alongside his regular playing partner, club director Peter Morrison. It had already been a decent day out. Soon, it would become the sort of tale destined to live in clubhouse folklore forever.
Geraghty, 68, had begun feeling a level of discomfort about the 16th hole. “I started to get a bit of pain in the back, which I just passed off as, I must have tweaked something,” he recalls.
By the walk to the 17th green, the pain had travelled down into his arm. “It still wasn’t very severe or anything. So, I’ve gone to the 18th tee thinking, There’s something wrong here, but I just wanted to finish the round because, well, I was on 35 points.”
Only golfers will truly understand that level of commitment. Geraghty stood strong on the 18th tee and striped his drive down the middle. Seconds later, things took a dramatic turn.
“My left arm was ‘gone’… really painful, which I knew was a major heart-attack symptom. It was right there and then that I realised I was in big trouble.”
As fate would have it, the course marshal just happened to be nearby in a golf cart, so his playing partners waved him down, noticing Geraghty was starting to keel over. Within moments, Geraghty was bundled into the cart and rushed back towards the clubhouse while his mates remained on the 18th fairway in a state of shock.
This is where the story becomes gloriously, wonderfully golf. While Geraghty was being driven off while suffering what doctors would later confirm was a 100 percent blockage of the notorious ‘widow-maker’ artery, his good mate, Tony, who himself survived a cardiac arrest two decades earlier, was already on the phone to Triple Zero. But neither he nor Morrison were prepared to abandon the hole.
“They were walking down the fairway, and Tony was still on the Triple-Zero call when he arrived at his ball,” Geraghty said. “He handed the phone to Pete, and played his shot into the green, then took the phone back and Pete played his shot into the green.”
Golfers truly are a different species.
Back inside the clubhouse, Geraghty’s condition was rapidly deteriorating. “I said, ‘No, no, it’s getting worse.’”
Luckily, an ambulance arrived within minutes. Then another intensive care unit ambulance followed immediately after. “I could hear them in the ambulance saying, ‘Get the catheter lab ready.’ The pain was quite incredible because I had 100 percent blockage of my left anterior descending artery, which most people don’t survive.”
Doctors later said Geraghty was incredibly fortunate to survive, with the hospital’s close proximity proving crucial. Less than an hour after collapsing on the 18th fairway, surgeons at St George Hospital had inserted a stent, re-opened the artery and saved Geraghty’s life.
“Virtually as they pushed the catheter through with the stent that opens up the blockage, within seconds you’re back to normal. It was just like, What the hell just happened?”
Meanwhile, back at Beverley Park’s 18th green, Morrison had another pressing concern: the scorecards.
“Pete is a stickler for the rules, being a director of the club and all,” Geraghty laughed. “He said, ‘We’ve got to make sure we do it all properly.’”
So, while Geraghty lay in hospital recovering from emergency heart surgery, his mates grabbed his mobile phone from his golf bag, logged into Geraghty’s MiScore app and officially entered his ‘wipe’ on the 18th hole. Perfectly legal. Completely absurd. And somehow, enough to win.
“Pete managed to have a 5-a-1 on 18 (while talking to emergency services) and, wouldn’ you believe it, we won the two-ball best-ball competition for the day by one shot,” Geraghty said.
Naturally, the messages started flowing immediately. “They told me, ‘It was your turn to buy the chips (a weekly ritual between the group).’ And they joked, ‘We were going to send the money to your estate anyway if you didn’t make it with the prizemoney.’”
His prize for surviving the whole ordeal? A $35 bar credit. Only in golf could a man nearly die, ride to hospital in an ambulance and still collect the day’s winnings.
“I joked with them that I won the day and I was in an ambulance,” he laughed.
As bizarre as the story sounds, the aftermath somehow became even stranger. Geraghty’s son, Sean, won the A Grade competition that same day, while another ‘Geraghty’ – unrelated to Paul and Sean – won B Grade.
Paul and Morrison won the team event. “There were three Geraghtys on the presentation sheet,” Geraghty laughs. “Unfortunately, one of them was an absentee.”
The jokes around the club have not stopped since. “They call me Lazarus,” Geraghty says. Even more ridiculous? Four weeks after being cleared to play again, Geraghty returned and shot a net 63 on medal day. “What’s the secret?” he joked. “A near-death experience suddenly fixes your swing.”
Today, Geraghty views the episode as a legitimate second chance. “I’ve got two grandkids, so I want to see them grow up,” he said. “I’m treating it as a second chance in life rather than, Oh well, I dodged that bullet.”
Geraghty knows how close he came to teeing it up in the sky. “The cardiac specialist said to me after the operation, ‘You were probably a couple of minutes from death.’”
Instead, thanks to quick-thinking mates, nearby ambos, brilliant hospital staff and perhaps a touch of golfing fate, Paul Geraghty survived to hear the best sentence any club golfer could possibly hear: “Mate, you’ve won the comp!”
