Do you remember the second Saturday in April this year? Saturday, April 13, 2024. It was exceptional and ordinary, as most days are. The third round of the 2024 Masters was played on that Saturday. That would place it for many golf fans, and maybe jog the memory for some others, even if they are not.
By sunset at Augusta on that Saturday, Scottie Scheffler had a one-shot lead in the tourney. Tiger Woods made the 36-hole cut but, spent by Friday’s fierce winds, shot a third-round 82. Ludvig Åberg, a promising 24-year-old Swedish golfer in his first Masters, had a showy tee time for Saturday afternoon, 2:15, and shot 70. Fantastisk!
On it goes, that Saturday. So fantastic and ordinary and everything else. Maybe you played that day. Maybe you watched the tournament. Maybe you cleaned the garage.
In Sweden, a golf fan named Christian Krüeger, in his late 50s, was organizing his day so he could watch Åberg on the Swedish telecast, even though it would be late at night in Gothenburg, where Christian was playing in a national tennis tournament for senior amateur players. Christian’s wife, Susanne, at their home in Stockholm, was less likely to watch it. She was drawn to more aerobic sports. When their three kids were young, Christian, a finance executive, had a three-year plan to get down to a single-digit handicap. He would rise in the predawn darkness to practice and play. “Keep this up,” Susanne told him, “and you’ll be a single-digit golfer — and a single father.” Christian took a leave from golf.
Whatever sports their two sons and daughter played, Susanne and Christian played, too. The Krüeger fivesome was always playing. They skied and skated; they played tennis and squash; they swam and biked. They climbed mountains. Outdoor activity was a way of life for them. What else would you expect? They’re Swedish!
The middle child, Filip Krüeger, was 4,000 miles from his parents on that Saturday. He had left Sweden for Philadelphia in 2018 to play squash at Drexel. In his five years at the university — his eligibility extended by the pandemic — he was the team captain four times. He had graduated from Drexel and was living in an apartment in downtown Philadelphia with his girlfriend. He was starting a career in finance, like his father, like his mother. He was loaded with promise and half-broke, in that just-out-of-college way. His family was affluent, in that unassuming Swedish way. A rustic country house, high-tech cold-weather coats.
In Philadelphia, that Saturday morning in mid-April was windy, cool and gray. Filip and his friends were on for golf, off for golf, then on again. There was a small posse of them, Drexel squash players from different countries who, since the pandemic, had fallen deep into the rabbit hole of golf. Their text chain made the rounds, four guys raised their hands, and off they went, by car, to a nearby course, Filip and three of his buddies, heading out to the Melrose Country Club, just outside the city limits.
The course was once private and pristine and was now public and run down, but it was fine for them. They were regulars. The price was right — $50, mandatory cart — and it was seldom crowded. Some of its holes were originals by Perry Maxwell, a Golden Age design legend, but that meant nothing to Filip and his golf pals. It had what they wanted: 18 holes of fresh air, outdoor golf.
That Saturday had turned into a lovely spring day in Philadelphia. By afternoon, the clouds had lifted and Melrose was awash in spring sunlight. It was about 3 p.m. when the four squash-playing golfers reached the ninth tee.
The rest of the day and weekend was shaping up nicely for Filip. He’d play the back nine, watch the last hour of the Masters telecast. He’d catch up with Hatti, his girlfriend, who was with work colleagues in Connecticut. Maybe he’d play squash Sunday morning, watch the fourth round of the Masters Sunday afternoon, do some prep Sunday night to get ready for the workweek. He was always doing something.
***
MELROSE’S NINTH HOLE IS A PAR-4, about 330 yards long. A pretty ordinary hole, really. To the far left, you can see the traffic on Tookany Creek Parkway. Between the parkway and the fairway, there’s a large swath of scraggly rough. In the rough, there’s a cluster of tall, tangled trees. One of the trees, a red oak, about 200 yards off the tee and about 100 feet tall, was right on the edge of the fairway. Right on the edge of the fairway, with an odd and pronounced lean toward the fairway — and limbs that stretched far over it. Nobody’s favorite tree. But you could say that of the whole left side of the hole. It was a bogey waiting to happen. Bogey or worse. Best to avoid the entire region.
But, as is often the case in golf, this ninth hole at Melrose offered more appealing options, too. All you had to do was orient yourself to its right side, where there were fewer trees in play, manageable rough and a welcoming fairway. On the Saturday in mid-April when Filip and his friends were playing Melrose, the ninth fairway was the picture of spring, practically dancing in the sunlight.
If you were on the hunt for beauty, you could find it on that hole, as you can find it most anywhere. The feminine sweep of its fairway. The modest hill leading to its simple, elevated table-top green. The wide open up-the-middle entrance to the green, but its gatekeepers, too: a trap on its right side, a severe hill on its left. You see holes like this throughout rural Scotland, on courses way off the tourist trail. Nobody would call the ninth at Melrose postcard-ready. But it did have a certain something.
As he stood on the ninth tee, Filip Krüeger took a photo on his phone. One of his partners is on the tee in the foreground. On the left side you can see the rough with its hodgepodge of trees. And, to the right of the rightmost tree, a broad stretch of fairway, its grass green and inviting, like the GO light on a traffic signal.
***
THIS SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN MID-APRIL is going too fast. Can we slow down the clock here, go to four corners, do something?
Along those same lines: this paint-by-words portrait of Filip Krüeger is inadequate. For starters, the four-time captain thing. Nobody at Drexel can recall anything like that happening before. He graduated from Drexel. True, but insufficient: He had a joint degree in engineering and finance. You don’t ChatGBT your way to that degree. Yes, Filip was, as noted,starting a career in finance in Philadelphia. But nobody thought Philadelphia would be able to contain him, and neither would a career in finance. Filip had, through squash, friends from all over the world and, traveling in that college-kid bare-bones way, had already seen a lot of it, with a notion to see the rest.
As for his girlfriend, Hatti. Hatti Specter. She was more than Filip’s girlfriend. She and Filip met through squash at Drexel, and they were a committed couple. Flying to Stockholm during the dark days of the pandemic they pretended to be married, to ease the entry requirements. It didn’t take much pretending. They were beshert, to use a Yiddish word Hatti’s family has known forever, and the Krüeger had come to know: destined, fated. Meant to be.
***
SQAUSH RUNS THROUGH THE SPECTER FAMILY. Arlen Specter, the longtime Pennsylvania senator, played a lot squash, almost to his final days. His son Shanin, a Pennsylvania trial lawyer, is a serious squash player with a court at home. Shanin’s wife, Tracey, a triathlete, life coach and cook, played college and adult competitive squash. Shanin and Tracey have four daughters, and for Hatti, the youngest, squash has been a lifelong passion. The gleaming, public Arlen Specter U.S. Squash Center, the national home for American squash, is on the Drexel campus. The Drexel team plays across the street, on courts named for Shanin’s law firm, the Kline & Specter Squash Center, on Market Street in the University City section of West Philadelphia. The firm’s office is a mile away, across the Schuylkill River, on Locust Street in downtown Philadelphia, near the Racquet Club. Shanin is never far from squash.
He’s also, at work, never far from City Hall and its courtrooms, and never far from Philadelphia’s federal court buildings. When Shanin was a kid, his father was Philadelphia’s district attorney. Later, Shanin’s mother, Joan Specter, was a Philadelphia city council member. When she died in June, at age 90, her life in politics was discussed prominently at her funeral, but so was her earlier career, as a commercial baker of apple pies. She owned cooking schools and wrote a food column. She was a foodie, a stylish and slender one. Nobody left the post-service spread at Mrs. Specter’s funeral hungry. I’m really speaking for myself, but I do think it had to be true for everybody there.
They were just about to pass the tall red oak with the odd lean and the protruding limb when, without warning, it gave way. No wind burst, no anything, just a 90-year-old tree collapsing, as if a sniper had hit it. It’s hard to imagine: 50 tons of tree, 100,000 pounds, standing one second, crashing into ground the next. The tree fell suddenly, violently, with terrifying speed, exposing its root system as the tree’s base was ripped out of the ground. A part of the tree landed on the passenger side of the cart, crushing it.
The other two playing partners, slightly ahead of José and Filip and on the other side of the fairway, called 9-1-1. All manner of emergency medical professionals came racing down Tookany Creek Parkway. EMTs and firefighters and police officers were on the scene in minutes. José was walking around in shock, unaware that he was bleeding profusely from a laceration on his arm. Filip’s death, in all likelihood, was immediate.
***
THE AFTERMATH OF A QUICK and inexplicable death triggers a storm of its own. Investigations are set in motion. Professionals from different fields step in, to document and report, to conduct tests, collect samples, take statements. There are dozens of people who need to be called. There are protocols, standard operating procedures, in place. There’s a book.
But every quick and inexplicable death has a preamble that is all its own. How did this tragic perfect storm, one that leads to unimaginable sorrow, come to be in the first place? What preceded it?
And as you dive into that preamble, something extraordinary happens. The mundane becomes beautiful. What was meaningless is suddenly stamped FOREVER. Filip’s final photo, final scorecard, final drive, even if it was a duff. His final 5-iron, right on the sweet spot, a shot that looked so good, until it ticked that tree on the left.
Filip started the round 5-7-4, then went 5-5-6. (Golf loves threes, doesn’t it?) Followed by a miracle, a par on 7, and a return to earth, a double on 8. Eight holes, 11 over par.
Filip was always taking photos. The last one he took captured the tree that claimed his life. That 100-foot-tall red oak, with its old-age lean and its outstretched arm. What are the chances?
What are the chances that a tree would fall on a moving golf cart and result in a death?
Hard to get your arms around it.
Filip’s final scorecard:
1. 5
2. 7
3. 4
4. 5
5. 5
6. 6
7. 4
8. 5
The box for 9 remains empty.
***
IN HIS ALMOST 26 YEARS, Filip had lived a rich, rich life, as a squash player, team captain, student, world traveler, son, brother, friend, work colleague, golfer with the bug, boyfriend. Twenty-five years, 10 months, six full days and most of a seventh. That final Saturday afternoon in mid-April.
***
I KNOW FILIP. I didn’t in fact, but I feel like I do. I watched a video of his memorial service, from late April, organized by Hatti and held in a large auditorium on the Drexel campus. (Christine and I were at a family wedding.) At a court-naming ceremony in Filip’s honor at the Drexel squash courts in November, attended by a hundred or more people, I was bowled over by the spirit of the event, the presence of the former Drexel president, Susanne Krüeger’s ability to comfort others, the quality of the Swedish treats on catering tables against a back wall. Over the past half-year or so, I have had the chance to talk about Filip with Susanne and Christian Krüeger; Tracey and Shanin Specter; his friend and golf partner José López; Noel Heaton, a former Drexel squash player and Filip’s closest friend; and Hatti. Most especially Hatti.
You can sense Filip’s energy, playfulness and intelligence when you hear Hatti and others talk about him. You get a sense of his presence, his charisma. He was tall, lean and fit, with blue eyes, a mop of thick reddish hair and a half-goofy smile. When he played squash with Shanin, the question was not who would win. The question, at least for Filip, was how long he should stretch the points out so Shanin could get a workout without collapsing on the court. Shanin described their matches as “charitable events.”
Filip’s long arms, in concert with his competitive desire, helped him get to almost any shot while playing squash. He used those long arms to hug sweaty opponents in victory and defeat. But they were bad for his golf — they looped around, trying to do too much. He was working on it. He played golf casually — mulligans, improved lies, gimmes — but he was serious about getting better. Filip and Noel often went to Five Iron Golf, an indoor range a short walk from the apartment Filip shared with Hatti.
Before that, all through his five years at Drexel, Filip lived with Noel, a Canadian, along with two other Drexel squash players, one from Colombia, the other from India. They called their apartment the U.N. Filip traveled easily and well, and no matter where he went, in the U.S. or anywhere else, he was attuned to the world around him. In Mumbai, Filip stopped to listen to the call for prayer from minarets, considered the lives in the city’s vast slums, engaged his shoeless caddie in conversation. Filip was open, curious and empathetic. Those qualities were in his bones.
Hatti studied public health at Drexel. She’s 24 and graduated Drexel last year. In the wake of Filip’s death, Hatti has thrown herself into her work, first as a campaign aid and now as a legislative aid to Sarah McBride of Delaware, an incoming member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the first openly transgender person elected to the House or Senate. Hatti was at a fundraiser for McBride in Connecticut, where McBride’s brother lives, when Filip died. One of Hatti’s sisters and a cousin drove from Philadelphia to Connecticut to tell Hatti the news.
NOOOOOO!
No-no-no-no-no.
That cannot be true.
When Hatti speaks of Filip, tears can drop from her eyes and run down her cheeks like a dripping faucet on a sink. But the crying has no effect on her breathing, no effect on her ability to say exactly what she wants to say. In the days immediately after Filip’s death, she wrote down what she did, who she called, what she thought. She’s loaded with emotion and precision, an uncommon combination. It’s some one-two punch.
The morning after the accident, early on that Sunday, Hatti was at the Montgomery County coroner’s office. She was there before it opened. She wanted to see Filip’s body. An officer there advised against it. Hatti was insistent. The officer was, too: “It’s not the way you want to see him for the last time.” Hatti, strong-willed by nature, relented.
Whatever the family gets, they would pay that for 10 more minutes with their son.
