Reigning champ Horschel talks about disastrous start
COVER PHOTO: Last year's Memorial Tournament champ, Billy Horschel, acknowledges the crowd after making a par on par-4, No. 13. Picture by Mac Connor/Columbus Wired.
Reigning Memorial Tournament champion Billy Horschel has had a wild year since winning his seventh PGA Tour event at the Muirfield Village Golf Club last year.
The world’s 35th-ranked golfer has missed nine cuts in 25 tournaments but has also finished in the Top-25 seven times including four in the Top-10.
At times, he’s literally broken down and cried after missing a cut, including at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in early March and the second at the RBC Heritage in mid-April. Following the Arnold Palmer Inv., he had a “lively discussion” for about 45 minutes in the parking lot afterwards with his stats guy, Mark Horton, and his caddy, Mark Fulcher.
“Even before I got back to the room, just in my car, just thinking about the discussion and thinking about where the game was and where I want to be and where I’m not at the moment, I sort of just broke down a little bit. I don’t cry very often … but I had tears.”
Then came the RBC a month-and-a-half later where a bad second round brought his fifth cut this year.
“It was just a mental sort of grind and stress and fatigue and just on the range for about 30 seconds just bending down, I had my head in my hands just trying to hold back the tears for a little bit.”
Unfortunately for Horschel, there’s an extremely good chance we won’t see him on moving day come Saturday because he finished Thursday’s opening round next-to-last with a 12-over par, 84.
“I'm not able to hit the cut the way I want. I can't get the ball to start left the way I want. So then when it comes down to having to be more precise on a course like this, it's just, it's tough. Yeah, I mean, I'll keep working,” he said after the round.
Starting with the fourth afternoon group off the first tee, Horschel had to save par after his second shot went 22 feet above the hole in the intermediate rough but was able to stick his pitch to within a foot of the hole.
Three straight bogeys on Nos. 2, 3 and 4 with a double on par-4, No. 9 put him in a precarious position at the turn with a five-over, 41. Another double bogey to begin the back nine followed up with a bogey on No. 11, another double on No. 14 and two more bogeys to finish out the round gave him his worst round ever on Jack Nicklaus’s course. His previous worst was a third-round 82 two years ago. Those are his only rounds ever in the 80’s.
Even so, Horschel isn’t ready to call it quits.
“As much as I would love to throw in the towel and not come out tomorrow, that's just not in me. I'm just not one of those players. There's plenty of those guys out here on TOUR that would make an excuse about being injured and everything. I'll show up and I'll go out there and give it my all like I always do and try and find something, try and play well, and move on. I mean, it's a day and I've had plenty of these days this year. Not this bad, but it's just a day. We'll get by it.”
His Friday round will begin at 7:41 a.m. on the 10th tee.