ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND | Paul McGinley, from the ranks of the Sky Sports commentators, was not the only pundit to suggest that the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup side would have benefitted from some younger vice captains, players who were still in touch with the latest high-fliers. He recommended the 36-year-old Billy Horschel, winner of the ’14 FedEx Cup, the ’22 Memorial Tournament and, for another noteworthy tag, the first of the top golfers to have partnered with his wife in the Dunhill Links Championship here last week.
He and the 2-handicap Brittany were practising over the Old Course as early as last Tuesday. When Horschel learned from GGP that his name had come up as a possible American vice captain for ’25, the news came as music to his ears. There was a meaningful pause before he said there was nothing he would want more. “It would be such an honour,” he added.
On the subject of the match of ’23, he was still doing as many another in pondering whether the players would have done better to interrupt what for most of them was a month-long post-FedEx Cup rest period with rather more than practice sessions. As he saw it, a week or even two weeks of competitive play would have been more in order.
He appreciated that the season had been a long one and that everyone was tired. However, the data he had collected for himself since turning professional in 2009 had amply demonstrated that anything over a two-week break did not work for him. “If I took three weeks off, I was never as good in my first week back as I was the following week. It was no different to how things were at Marco Simone. Our team were rusty when they lost the opening foursomes. Then they improved and, by the time it came to the singles, they were really sharp.”
For him, the belief was making itself felt when he followed a top-50 finish in last month's Irish Open with a share of 18th place in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, where he won in 2021.
He picked the two players from each team whose efforts he had admired the most. From his compatriots, he chose Max Homa and Scottie Scheffler. Though Horschel's FedEx Cup heroics had happened too late for him to be included in the Ryder Cup side of ’14, he had revelled in playing alongside Homa in the ’22 Presidents Cup. They had partnered with each other in the Friday fourballs and, after Homa had holed lengthy putts at the 17th and 18th holes for their win, Horschel had told Homa that he would win a major in the next couple of years.
“What I saw from Max in Italy merely reaffirmed what I had said to him then,” Horschel said of the Americans’ leader in points, who went 3-1-1.
At a time when so many were drooling over LIV Golf’s millions, Horschel had been similarly impressed with how an excited Homa had reacted to their result with the heartfelt line, “Money cannot buy that feeling!”
As for Scheffler, Horschel had been glued to his match with Jon Rahm in the lead Sunday singles and seen their halved result as the perfect example of how such a contest should be conducted.
“The way they handled it didn’t surprise me at all,” he said. “The golf was great, and the two of them had such respect for each other. You could see it all the way, and never more than when they shook hands at the end.”
For Europe, his two nominees were Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose.
“I’m choosing Rory because he was carrying the entire golf world on his shoulders after everything had gone so wrong for him at Whistling Straits,” Horschel said of the Europeans’ 19-9 loss in 2021. “He had to perform, and the way he stepped up was amazing.”
On to Rose: “He stood out to me not just as a player but as a magnificent stalwart as he shepherded Bob MacIntyre early on.”
For the Dunhill Links Championships of ’21 and ’22, Horschel played, respectively, with his father, Billy Horschel Sr., and Mark Noble, the former West Ham United footballer whose team Horschel has supported ever since watching the film “Green Street.” (In it, a wrongfully expelled Harvard undergraduate moves to London and is introduced to the violent underworld of football hooliganism.)
Barely had Horschel and Noble finished in a share of 10th place than Brittany asked her husband whom he had in mind as a partner for ’23. He mentioned a couple of names before she intervened with the words, “What about me?” Her startled husband who, incidentally, fell for Brittany even before he saw her swing, went along with the idea and, judging from her play in their practice round, you felt that the only thing which could hold the pair back was her 2-handicap.
Aside from advising Brittany on how to escape the Road Hole Bunker – a shot which she executed to perfection – Horschel had some advice for those everyday golfers who have gone through a similar golfing low as he did earlier this year. His low never was more acute than when, in setting out to defend his title in the Memorial Tournament at the start of June, he opened with an 84.
In the minds of the media, no golfers are more admirable than those who are prepared to speak to them after such a high number. Horschel did just that.
“We’ve got a job to do, and the press have a job to do,” he said. “I understand that, and the more I’ve gone along with what the media want, the better they’ve got to know and understand me.”
After examining everything there was to examine, Horschel found that the angle on his latest set of irons had been ever-so-slightly awry. Following on from that discovery, he set about sorting himself out in a way which, he believes, could work for anyone.
“You have to go back to your fundamentals – stance, grip, etc. – and tick every box,” he said. “Next, you have to make mini-goals for yourself. You can’t expect things to come right overnight. It’s a slow process, but you’ll start to get over the hump and, little by little, you’ll begin to believe in yourself again.”
And if any more encouragement was needed last week, the expectation was that he would get it from Brittany – and she from him.
“Great shot, Brit,” he cried, as her tee shot at the 18th bounded off Grannie Clark’s Wynd on its way toward the green.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: The Horschels – Brittany and Billy – walk the fairway at the Dunhill Links.
DAVID CANNON, GETTY IMAGES