Italian golfer Andrea Pavan has suffered serious injuries after falling down an elevator shaft.
Pavan, 36, was in Cape Town for the Investec South African Open, which began on February 26, when he suffered the freak accident at his private accommodation on Wednesday.
Pavan called for the elevator but failed to notice, when the doors opened, that there was no elevator car waiting to collect him. He fell down three floors and was taken to the hospital for treatment on his injuries.
The incident was first reported by Ryan French, a golf journalist who runs the Monday Q Info account on X. The nature of the accident has since been verified by The Athletic.
French reported that Pavan, who was born in Rome but is a Texas A&M alumni and now the world No 249, underwent surgery at hospital.
When contacted by The Athletic, a DP World Tour spokesperson confirmed that Pavan withdrew from the tournament at Stellenbosch Golf Club due to injury but said they could not give any more details on the incident due to medical confidentialities.
A GoFundMe page has been set up by Matt Van Zandt, a former college teammate of Pavan’s from Texas A&M, to support Pavan’s recovery and has raised more than $27,000.
The page says that Pavan, who is married with three children, was taken to a local hospital with “significant injuries to his shoulder and back, including severe shoulder damage and fractures to several vertebrae.”
It added that he had undergone at least one major surgery and will need further medical care and additional procedures, and is expected to remain in South Africa “for many weeks before he can be safely evaluated for travel back to the U.S.”
Pavan was last in action at the Qatar Masters earlier this month (Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
It added that the funds raised will go towards “medical expenses, extended stay in South Africa, transportation back home to the Dallas area, ongoing medical care and hopefully some extra to ease the uncertainty of his professional golf future.”
Pavan, who turned professional in 2010, is a two-time winner on the DP World Tour and has eight wins overall. He has appeared at three majors: the U.S. Open in 2014 and 2025, and the 2019 Open.
His most significant win to date arrived in 2019 when he overcame Matt Fitzpatrick in a play-off to be crowned winner of the BMW International Open in Munich, Germany.
His most recent appearance was at the Qatar Masters in Doha earlier this month, where he missed the cut.
“By all accounts, he’s in good spirits, thankful to be alive and FaceTiming with his kids,” said J.T. Higgins, Pavan’s former college coach, as cited by Golfchannel.com.
