We wrote this about Billy Horschel back in September 2015:
Yeah, Horschel. Got lost in the shuffle at the end of the FedEx Cup playoffs last year, and that’s after he won it. Won the $10 million. Won two straight tournaments at the end of the playoffs, and he was called a symptom of the worst aspects of the FedEx scoring system. He was called an opportunist, plain lucky, because he won at the right time.
Grey Goatee Nation doesn’t call him any kind of goddamn symptom. We call him a money player.
Horschel earned $1.7 million-plus in each of 2015 and 2016, not chump change, but he hadn’t won since that season-ending Tour Championship in September 2014. Until this week, when he took out World No. 4 Jason Day on the first playoff hole to win the Byron Nelson.
Horschel is winning at the right time this year, which is to say there’s no time like the present time.
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May 19, 2017
When in Texas, might as well keep an eye on the Texans.
Robert Trent Jones Jr. would surely agree. As the PGA Tour moves into the weekend at the AT&T Byron Nelson in Irving, Texas, I was put in mind of the thoughts of the esteemed golf course architect on the way Texans play the game.
The subject of our conversation, at that point in the May 2015 interview, was the “chirping” that had already started up nearly a month ahead of the U.S. Open about the conditions and challenges of the Open venue that year, Chambers Bay, which Jones designed.
“I want you to notice, you’ll never hear any chirping out of Texans,” said Jones, himself a Texan. “Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Lee Trevino, Jordan Spieth … They don’t chirp. They just come and play. They’re stoic.”
So, okay: Spieth, the top Texan in the world, shot 68-75 Thursday and Friday in Irving. Missed the cut.
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