“Neil said that as soon as he touched down in New York he felt like he needed to get on a plane to Aberdeen. His instinct was telling him something wasn’t right.”
He was a rising star in the world of golf.
Young Scot Neil Fyfe caddied for some of the greatest names in the sport, including Jack Nicklaus and Luke Donald, and became a pal of US basketball champ-turned-golfer Michael Jordan.
But the 28-year-old Aberdonian who longed to work on the PGA Tour was cycling home from the first day of a new dream job at the exclusive Sebonack Golf Club in the Hamptons, New York, when he was killed by drunk driver Jesse Steudte, 23.
Today, to mark the first anniversary of his death and with Steudte just weeks into a minimum four-year jail sentence for manslaughter the woman with whom he had planned marriage and children speaks publicly for the first time of her loss.
And businesswoman Jennifer Mouncey, 26, also exclusively reveals:
Premonitions of his death.
Her words to his killer.
How her love’s memory is living on through the sport he adored.
At her home in the city’s Bridge of Don she gazes at the lyrics of a song that guitarist and Oasis fan Neil wrote to her just weeks before he died.
“He called it Remember Me,” she says. “It is like he knew what was going to happen.
“It’s the final verse that gets me the most ‘As you stare at this skyline on a New York city night, shed a tear for me, lover, as my candle burns bright’.”
Her voice falters but she struggles on: “I had a feeling that Neil was not safe in the US.
“The job in the Hamptons was to be his last stint at caddying in the US before he came home and tried to get on the Scottish and European tours.
“Before that he had been working at Jack Nicklaus’s Bear’s Club down in Florida from where, with Jack’s encouragement, he was trying to set up a golf scholarship for kids in Scotland at the Old Course in St Andrew’s.
“Neil said that as soon as he touched down in New York he felt like he needed to get on a plane to Aberdeen. His instinct was telling him something wasn’t right.
“But I knew he really wanted the job at Sebonack it was part of the dream and so I said it would all be OK and we would be reunited in a few months. Inside, my heart was already breaking, I missed him so much. I guess I was going against my instinct, too.”
Jennifer, who graduated from the city’s Robert Gordon University with a degree in tourism management and who was the first of the couple to go to the US to work, eventually returned home but supported Neil in his decision to pursue his golfing career there.
Back in Aberdeen she progressed their idea of launching the private pet nannying service Top Dawg.
Cuddling up to pooch Fudge, her first canine client, she ruffles the collar and smiles: “This is as much Neil’s business as mine. He insisted I do it and was as involved as I in setting it up. Top Dawg was launched in the weeks before he died. Neil was always my greatest supporter. He wouldn’t want me to give up now.”
The couple met at Aberdeen’s Oldmachar Academy but only started dating after Neil left. Jennifer who was 16 at the time recalls: “The first time I saw Neil he was hitting balls in the school grounds. He used to go there to practise at 7am in the morning and it drove the headmaster mad.”
Neil’s taxi driver dad Stephen, 63, taught him the game when he was just 11 encouraged by Neil’s mum, also Jennifer, 64, and his sister Angela, 33. His first lesson with a professional ended as quickly as it began with the pro declaring Neil who had a handicap of three to be ‘a natural’ and that there was little he could teach him.
Neil’s partner Jen, as she prefers to be called, adds: “When I got my university placement in 2009 at the Waccabuc Country Club in upstate New York he was so encouraging and came to join me for a three week holiday.
“He was beside himself because it was on a golf course. I worked as a waitress, serving dinners on the patio and there would be Neil, on the first tee, with everyone watching him in awe.”
Neil went on to work at the club, before moving to the Bethpage Black Course in Long Island and the prestigious Bayonne Golf Club in New Jersey.
He quickly made a reputation for himself and was soon spending the winters working for the ‘Golden Bear’, world golfing legend Jack Nicklaus, in Florida.
Jen laughs: “He became friends with Michael Jordan and they shared a standing joke about how Neil gave him verbal abuse after Michael cut him up in his car. He used to tease Michael that his golf buggy looked like a pimp-mobile!”
Her smile fades: “He was supposed to come home from Florida when he got the opportunity to go to Sebonack. Despite his initial misgivings on arrival he soon settled down. I spoke to him the night before he died and he was happy. The next morning I woke to a beautiful sunny day and phoned my mum to say how happy I was.
“Then I got a phonecall from Neil’s dad. He told me he had been killed. It was surreal. I could not believe it. He had everything to live for. We talked about getting married and having children. He told my sister in the weeks before he died he was planning a special surprise for me in Italy but swore her to secrecy. I wonder now if he was going to pop the question.
“The pain of what might have been is immense. But Neil would not want me or his family to be consumed by grief or anger. He would want us to go on living and eventually be happy again. But it takes a great deal of effort to get through each day.”
And she reveals: “I went to New York for Jesse Steudte’s court case in February after he admitted his crime. He is just an ordinary kid. I told him he had taken a very special person away from us and that he had robbed me of the chance of having children with Neil and had robbed Neil of his PGA dream.
“But I added that I hoped he was a good kid, and that he would learn from his terrible mistake and make a brighter future for himself. It is what Neil would have wanted. Jesse apologised to me and that helped bring some closure.”
Neil’s family travelled to the Sebonack club after his death. Its flags were flown at half-mast and Jack Nicklaus sent them flowers out of respect for their exceptionally talented boy. In the midst of immeasurable grief came great pride.
Jen says: “I will see Neil again one day, and when I put out my hand out I know he will be holding it. I sometimes tell myself he is just in the next room.”
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