In mid-March of 2022, a van carrying the golf team from The University of the Southwest was headed home to Hobbs, NM after a tournament, driving north on a 2-lane road in west Texas. For reasons that haven’t yet been explained save for traces of methamphetamine in his system, the driver of a southbound pickup truck swerved to the left, and the two vehicles collided head-on. The ensuing fireball would claim the lives of six golfers, their coach, the driver of the pickup, and his 13 year-old son.

Darren shared "Golf Digest dispatched me on a 2,000-mile road trip across Texas and New Mexico to visit the families and the places central to the story, to provide the visual side of the story beautifully written by Jeff Pearlman. You can find it here: https://www.golfdigest.com/story/university-of-the-southwest-golf-program-head-on-truck-collision-stories"

"No, logistics or technicalities were not the issue here— unless you consider that being so emotionally torn by the subject matter made thinking about those things all the more difficult. How do you look parents in the eye when you know that you haven’t—and hopefully never will—know the loss they’ve endured? Standing at the side of Farm-To-Market Road 50 a few miles outside of Andrews, Texas, amid the rusted pumpjacks and barbed wire as the clouds gathered and the sky turned purple and lightning flashed in the distance, I stared at the makeshift memorial where, in the blink of an eye, nine lives were snuffed out, and countless others were irreversibly shattered—in an instant. I thought of my own 18 year-old son, only a year or two younger than those kids in the van. I couldn’t imagine. I still can’t. Nor do I ever want to."