Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Clinton loved playing golf in Britain and Ireland. So did Tom Watson, after an initial hiccup. But has any American loved the golf and the life in Britain as much as Billy Horschel?
“I love the sense of humour. I am fascinated by British humour,” Horschel said last week as he neared the end of a run of three tournaments in four weeks in Scotland, England and France. “I love that the people over here are trying to better their lives and work hard to progress in this world. They live in the present, enjoy what they have.
“I follow British politics. I have my Apple news, and articles from papers like the London Times pop up on it. I love Capital radio. I always have that station on in the car. TV-wise, I love Sky Sports. I am always watching that. I watch BBC One [television] in the morning for the news.
“Over here, I am on the golf course and then I’ll go and hang out with friends, sit down at the bottom of the hotel and chat. I don’t drink tea in the States, but when I come over, I drink quite a bit of tea.” He even has a preferred type of tea: “English breakfast tea.”
He watched a football match between West Ham United and Fulham at the latter’s Craven Cottage stadium in London recently and had a few pints of beer before and after the game. He drinks Guinness, too. But his favourite is a malt whisky from Scotland – “Glenmorangie, Balvenie, Macallan. No direct favourite, probably six or seven I’ll switch between.”
Goodness, it sounds as though he has his suits tailor-made in Savile Row and his shoes in Jermyn Street, two of London’s most famous streets. Horschel and Britain may be the most ardent relationship between an American and Britain since that between President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher some 40 years ago.
“Everyone over here is trying to get better as a golfer and win tournaments, and at the same time they enjoy spending time with each other. There is a sense of relaxation on this tour that I may not always experience on the PGA Tour.”
BILLY HORSCHEL
If Horschel likes being on this side of the Atlantic, those of us who live here like having him. We welcome him for the openness of his mind, his ready smile, his willingness to try different things and the way he plays golf, and the speed at which he plays it.
He won the BMW PGA Championship in 2021 with a skilfully played birdie on the 72nd hole and he won the same event last month by beating Rory McIlroy with an eagle on the second hole of the playoff.
His golf bag in the Open at Royal Troon in July, which he led after 54 holes before finishing tied for second with Justin Rose, was in the claret and blue colours of his favourite English football team, West Ham, and the bag bore the club’s logo of crossed hammers on it as well.
“I grew up watching the European Tour on TV back in the States,” Horschel continued. “It used to come on at 7 a.m. I would watch a couple of hours, then go and practice. To come over here and finally be able to play golf here, I enjoy this tour a lot.
“I enjoy the PGA Tour a lot, too, but some things I wish to change. Everybody is trying to beat each other, which is a great thing. It is so cutthroat that enjoyment among the players isn’t always there as it is over here. Everyone over here is trying to get better as a golfer and win tournaments, and at the same time they enjoy spending time with each other. There is a sense of relaxation on this tour that I may not always experience on the PGA Tour.”
Horschel, 37, has a wife and three children and concedes that trips to play golf in Europe, enjoyable and financially successful as they are, are one of the disadvantages of leaving his home in Florida.
“Miss my family, wife and kids. I miss the simplicity of being able to get fast casual food. Get done with the golf and go to Chipotle and grab a burrito and go back to my room.
“Rarely do I order room service over here compared to the States. My stats guy, Mark Horton, is English, and we grab dinner a lot, pretty much every night. I hang out with a lot of caddies: Thomas Detry’s caddie Lee Warner, Mark Fulcher, who used to caddie for me now caddies for Justin Rose. I’ll have dinner with Sean Crocker and Matt Wallace. I do more dinners out than I do in America.”
Competing in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland at the beginning of this month, Horschel partnered with Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour’s commissioner. In the first round, they played with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the boss of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and LIV Golf, and his professional partner, Dean Burmester. It was a deliberate ploy by Johann Rupert, the tournament host, to demonstrate that though the PGA Tour and LIV Golf are locked in what some call golf’s civil war, they could still play the game they both love.
“Yasir is, I think, 14 handicap. I don’t know how much time he gets to work on golf,” Horschel said. “Jay is a really good golfer, a really good stick. It was a very busy week for him off the golf course. I know he had numerous meetings. He [Jay] is a really good putter, and he has a really good short game. He can strike it very well, but putting-wise he rolled his ball beautiful all three days.
“The two men [Jay and Yasir] got on well together. They’ve had numerous conversations over the last year and a half. They’ve played golf together before. Yasir was great. I had several conversations with him. He was funny. He had some jokes. We had a good laugh. I love English sense of humour, and sometimes I throw that out there. I didn’t do that with Yasir. He has a very good sense of humour. He loves golf, wants to be a part of it.”
Another reason for Horschel’s popularity in Europe is that he is so clearly not chasing prize money. He knows purses in Europe are often half as much as in the U.S. yet believes the experience of crossing the Atlantic is worth it.
“I play a sport that does provide great financial reward and a lifestyle that my family and I love,” he said. “Money is an aspect, but it has never been a giant force to me. I had enough success on the PGA Tour. I have never looked at a purse and decided that I am going to play that tournament because of that purse. Never done that in my 15 years as a pro golfer.
“I don’t think the purses is what is keeping my fellow PGA Tour players from coming over. I think it’s because of the success of the PGA Tour commercially over 20 years there is no need for them to travel to make a living out of the game of golf. They can make everything they need out of the PGA Tour. I would love to see more Americans come over here, because if they did come over here … I think it would be better for not only them but better for the game of golf.”
Having missed the cut in the FedEx Open de France in Paris, Horschel flew home to the US on Saturday morning. As his plane passed high above England’s famous White Cliffs of Dover, he might just have been able to hear the words of a song wafting up to him. The people of England, the country whose rhythms and rituals he so enjoys, were singing to him:
“For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow.
"For he’s a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us!”
E-MAIL JOHN
Top: Billy Horschel, during the 2024 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship
Ross Parker, SNS Group via Getty Images