VIRGINIA WATER, ENGLAND | Were you looking among Americans for an Anglophile, then look no further than Billy Horschel? He might be a Floridian by birth and residence, but he seems to be so British, so at home in Old England, that one wonders whether he drinks English Breakfast tea and eats cucumber sandwiches at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. In case you hadn’t heard, he has a more than working knowledge of cricket, which is impressive, and the colours and name of West Ham United football club on his golf bag. He probably gets his lightweight suits made in Savile Row, too.
All of which might partly explain why Horschel, 34, felt so comfortable last week amidst the very British surroundings of Wentworth where he won the BMW PGA Championship, what the European Tour like to think of as their flagship event. Horschel could even be accused of overegging the cake when he kept referring to the Wentworth event as the equivalent of the Players in the US. The BMW PGA aspires to that level of status but is not there yet.
There are different ways of winning a tournament. Simply scoring a lower score than everyone else is one way. Hitting an approach shot to barely 1 foot on the 72nd hole to guarantee a birdie and a one-shot victory as Horschel did Sunday is another. The style of his victory will not have escaped Steve Stricker, captain of the US Ryder Cup team, who four days earlier (i.e., Wednesday) had selected a team minus the garrulous Floridian with the flashing smile. This was a surprise to those who remembered how Horschel had won the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play event in Austin, Texas in March.
Horschel was so far from Stricker’s radar that the two did not even talk on the telephone as one might have expected they would. “Hi Billy, it’s Steve. I am afraid I’m not thinking of you for a place in my team. I’m sorry.” That is the sort of blunt conversation that might have taken place. It didn’t though, and Horschel was stung. “Not even getting a phone call (from Stricker to talk about the Ryder Cup) did give me added motivation this week,” Horschel said yesterday.
To be at Wentworth last week, to turn off the A30 and drive down those tree-lined roads and see houses that are multimillion-pound mansions, was to be reminded that this tournament, whether in the spring as it used to be, or the autumn as it is now, is a bit like the annual general meeting of a public company. Though Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Sergio García and Paul Casey from Europe’s Ryder Cup team were absent, almost everybody else who is anybody was there. They came from many countries around the world. The last six groups on Saturday contained players from Ireland, South Africa, Belgium, Japan, Paraguay, the United States, England, Wales, Australia, Italy and Thailand. It was a United Nations of golf.
Among golf clubs, Wentworth is an aristocrat, a club where so much history has taken place. ... If there is such a thing in golf as a home venue, then for many players Wentworth is it.
The golf was only the half of it. It was a meeting place, too, as PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan demonstrated by flying over from Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, and spending hours in conversations with Keith Pelley, ET tour officials, managers and players.
“Jay’s great,” said Richard Rayment, who runs a management agency that looks after Rafael Cabrera-Bello, among others. “I had an hour with him earlier in the week.”
Wentworth in the autumn is not exactly heavy lifting, is it? It’s close to Heathrow airport so access and egress is easy. The theatres and shops of London are not out of reach. It may not be so sunny as Wentworth in the late spring but the course is in better condition, particularly the greens, and the alterations made by Ernie Els (twice) seem to have been met with general approval by the players.
Among golf clubs, Wentworth is an aristocrat, a club where so much history has taken place including the 1953 Ryder Cup, the always popular World Match-Play Championship sponsored by various firms down the years and this PGA Championship from 1972 to 1974 and, starting in 1984, every year since. If there is such a thing in golf as a home venue, then for many players Wentworth is it. The club’s castellated clubhouse and its russet-coloured creeper climbing the walls are as synonymous with Wentworth as is Pebble Beach’s lone tree and Merion’s wicker baskets on its flagsticks.
Last week Adam Scott returned to this corner of Surrey for the first time in 15 years. The Australian, like many other golfers, had a smile on his face. For him it was like coming home. “It’s kind of a bonus for me to be playing here really,” Scott said. “It brings back a lot of good memories from early in my career. There has always been such a great atmosphere here at Wentworth so I am happy to be in the mix. I mean early in the week the sun was shining and it was really glorious and then getting paired with Justin (Rose) for the first two rounds our careers have paralleled each other the whole way. I’ve really enjoyed myself this week.”
As a boy, Laurie Canter used to sneak into Wentworth through a car park, thus avoiding the habit so tedious to those without any money of having to pay to get in. Canter came up from the West Country, perhaps 100 miles to the west, and he did it year after year after year, his father acting as chauffeur. It would have been too good to be true had he, not Horschel, won at Wentworth yesterday but Canter, 31, had to be content with a runner-up finish, tied with Jamie Donaldson, who was a star at the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, and Kiradech Aphibarnrat. Aphibarnrat led after the first round and was not the least disappointed not to be leading at the end. By the side of the 72nd green he flashed a broad smile, gave the thumbs up with enthusiasm and then swept off his visor and gave a bow worthy of an actor on a stage in London’s West End.
But the real star of last week’s show was Horschel, whose smile is as wide as his shoulders and whose command of English and his facility for speaking it is as good as his iron play. “When I visit a different country I try to embrace it,” he said, talking in the gathering darkness with his trophy by his side. “I have done a really good job of embracing the surroundings and the people and I think they have taken kindly to me and I appreciate that.”
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