BAGSHOT, England — The table for one with the unopened pack of cigarettes and the untouched glass of cheap red wine stood a few feet from a sign that read, “Book This Room for Your Celebration.” The Tuesday night gathering here on the first floor of the Cedar Tree, in honor of a man who seldom ate alone, drew a crowd that spilled onto High Street with frothy glasses of Guinness.

Depending on the celebrators’ state of sobriety, it was the happiest wake or the saddest party they had ever attended. A few European Tour caddies organized the memorial for one of their own, Iain McGregor, who died May 11 during the final round of the Madeira Islands Open. It was two days before the tour’s flagship event began at Wentworth Club because to toast him so enthusiastically the night before the first round would have been an affront to McGregor, a staunch professional once he stepped inside the ropes.

“Mac was an old-school, tough-as-old-boots, straight-talking bagman that did his best,” read a tribute taped to a wall near the table displaying the untouched wine, the cigarettes and three framed photos of a smiling McGregor.

When McGregor, 52, fell face-first on mountainous Santo da Serra’s ninth fairway and never regained consciousness, it set off a chain of events that rocked professional golf on both sides of the Atlantic. The determination by tour officials to complete play after an hourlong delay and a moment of silence came under attack, as did the absence of an ambulance or a defibrillator on site. McGregor’s death renewed the call for mandatory medical checkups for caddies and players.

Playing on

The tour released a statement saying the decision to resume play was made after Alastair Forsyth, whose bag McGregor was carrying, declared it was what his caddie would have wanted. But in an interview with The Daily Record of Scotland, Forsyth, 38, said it was the opinion of George O’Grady, the European Tour’s chief executive, that the tournament should be completed. Forsyth chose to finish under duress.

Reached by phone Wednesday, he said, “I’m just trying to get over it and do the best I can.”

While the players warmed up for the restart, McGregor’s body lay on the fairway while his friend and roommate for the week, Roger Morgan, returned to their hotel to retrieve his passport so the coroner could make a positive identification.

Three players, Peter Lawrie, Alexandre Kaleka and Thomas Pieters, withdrew from the weather-shortened event.

“I didn’t want to spiral more withdrawals if I pulled out,” Forsyth said.

For Lawrie, not finishing his remaining holes, Nos. 8 and 9, felt at once like the right thing to do and an act of insubordination because he is on the tour’s tournament committee.

“Mac died on the left-hand side of the fairway where you try to hit it, so there was no way I was going to go back out there,” Lawrie said, adding: “I spoke to Alastair and I told him I was withdrawing. I told him it was a bad idea that we’re going back out there and the tour had made, I felt, the wrong decision.”

Lawrie said he sympathized with Forsyth and O’Grady, who he said had not been informed that McGregor lay on the fairway as they spoke. “I don’t think he would have made the decision that he did if he was given the full details,” Lawrie said.

Thomas Bjorn, the chairman of the players’ tournament committee that includes Lawrie, arranged to pay for the first round of drinks at the Cedar Tree. Bjorn and the other players and tour officials had a prior engagement: the tour’s annual dinner at a hotel a half-hour’s drive away. But they planned to honor McGregor by wearing “Black for Mac” attire at the BMW PGA Championship on Thursday.

Medical lessons

“What can we do to learn from what happened?” Bjorn said. “We’re very well aware that we do have to learn from it.”

Rising from the first tee box at Wentworth’s West Course is a statue of Bernard Gallacher, which will add a life-size measure of symbolism to Thursday’s tour tribute. While delivering a speech last summer, Gallacher went into cardiac arrest. A defibrillator was used three times to restart his heart. Gallacher and his wife since have started a campaign, with the Arrhythmia Alliance, to put a defibrillator in every golf clubhouse.

A defibrillator is kept in the tour’s fitness trailer, which is on the grounds at Wentworth but did not make the trip to the Madeira Islands, a lower-tier event with a small purse but the promise of a full year’s exemption for the winner.

An ambulance arrived after a few minutes, but it did not have a defibrillator, said Gerry Byrne, the head of the European Tour Caddies Association. Forsyth, the 2008 winner of the event, who witnessed McGregor’s collapse and resuscitation attempts, was in no condition to participate in any decision-making.

“He was in shock,” Morgan said. “He was not in the right frame of mind to think about what was happening.”

Golf delivered to McGregor a large, loud, loving clan of beer brothers. The week of the Madeira Islands Open, Michael Donaghy was caddying for Jamie Donaldson at the Players Championship in Florida. On Sunday, his phone was vibrating in his pocket for most of their second nine. Upon finishing, Donaghy checked his text messages and learned of McGregor’s death. He returned home to Glasgow the next day, drove to the nearest bar and ordered two drinks. He told the bartender that one was for his friend, Mac. Donaghy said he gulped the two of them.

As he told that story Tuesday, Donaghy held a drink in each hand. His colleague Craig Connelly, who helped Martin Kaymer to victory at the Players, was another of McGregor’s drinking buddies. He paid for plates of finger food for the party. There was no salad, he said, “because Mac never ate salad.”

Morgan, who met McGregor at the Cedar Tree when they rented rooms above the bar during the 2005 tournament, was too mournful to eat. Over the years, they went on safaris and drove across Europe from one tour stop to the next. He described McGregor, a Zimbabwe native, as one of the last remaining raconteurs in a sport increasingly populated by those who value making money over making memories.

“No matter where you were,” Morgan said. “you always felt safe with Mac.”