A year after tearful 84, Billy Horschel ready to shed scar tissue at the Memorial

DUBLIN, Ohio – Billy Horschel walked around Muirfield Village Golf Club on Tuesday trying to forget. He won the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday in 2022 and made lasting memories, but those joyful, triumphant thoughts weren’t the first that popped into his mind when he stepped on the first tee or walked off the 18th green.

It was one number, 84, and all the errant shots that produced it.

Horschel shot 12-over 84 in the first round of the 2023 Memorial. It was his rock bottom. He spent the early part of the year trying to implement new swing changes, but the consistency he craved was nowhere to be found. Then he shot one of the worst rounds of his career in defense of his Memorial title, his most significant win in a decade. The emotions were raw, and tears flowed in his post-round media scrum. Asked about his round and where he goes from there, Horschel paused for 20 seconds, tried to collect himself and said, “My confidence is the lowest it's been in my entire career.”

The transparent, emotional interview, which dove into the darker side of professional golf, endeared Horschel to the golfing public. It was cathartic for Horschel, too. He didn’t know it then, but after a year of reflection, it was the turning point.

There’s still scar tissue at Muirfield Village that needs to be shed. He spent the practice rounds this week recalling the shots he hit, wondering how on earth he hit it so off-line. Redemption will hopefully come this week. But Horschel, recently a winner at the Corales Puntacana Championship, is far from the golfer who walked off Muirfield with his tail between his legs.

“I believe this is the best my swing's ever been in my career,” Horschel said Tuesday.

A series of revelatory moments brought him to this point. The release of emotions at the Memorial was the first. The angst had built up for Horschel. He’s a prideful man and wanted to put up an admirable title defense. That was done away by his swing and a cut that wasn’t cutting. He made zero birdies, six bogeys and three doubles, exposed by a course with nowhere to hide. He didn’t expect to cry in front of the camera, but it was a pivotal moment.

“It’s amazing, just that impromptu off-the-cuff moment of sharing to the world how I felt– and then I wake up the next morning and I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders,” Horschel said. “It was a cool moment and that's why I'm always try to tell people, if you can be open, it really does relieve some weight.”

After Horschel finished, his coach Todd Anderson told Horschel he was proud of him. Not many would go face the media after one of the lowest moments of his career, Anderson said, and many others would withdraw. Horschel played on and shot 72 in the second round.

"At an all time low in confidence, embarrassed about how he played, he went into the press room, took the questions and then shot even-par the next day. That tells you about his mental toughness," Anderson said.

The round prompted Horschel to get his equipment checked ahead of the U.S. Open, which revealed the next course correction. Through 3D swing analysis, Horschel found the lie angle of his irons were 2-3 degrees too upright, causing his iron shots to miss left. Suddenly, it all made sense. Horschel and Anderson had poured through swing videos all spring. They loved where Horschel’s swing was but were perplexed as to why it wasn’t yielding the desired ball flight. With his irons correct, Horschel made the cut at the U.S. Open, carded a T13 at the 3M Open and finished fourth at the Wyndham Championship. He rattled off three straight top-20s on the DP World Tour in the fall. The swing was in a good place, but his mind still wasn’t right. He was guarding against all the mistakes that pushed him into a downward spiral. He missed the cut at THE PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass, a home course where he’s played hundreds of times.

He stuck around the event on the weekend. With the leaders entering the back nine on Saturday, Horschel was a few hundred yards away on the range with Anderson and his team. They spent an hour discussing what they needed to do differently to get the desired results.

“I just said, guys, it's on me, I need to just let it go. I'm still holding on. I'm still protecting from hitting those crazy wild golf shots and not giving myself a chance of hitting a high-quality golf shot,’” Horschel said, “and if I focus on trying to hit the great golf shot, do something special, I'm better off. There's less chance of me hitting a bad golf shot versus me trying to protect or miss it somewhere. So that was, that's just all mental. We went to Tampa the next week and we we had this motto of ‘play fearlessly, swing fearlessly.’”

"I remember it well," Anderson said. "He made double on his second-to-last hole on Friday to fall outside the cut and he was just distraught. His family and friends were out there, and he just felt terrible. So he sat us down and had a powwow, and he just said it was on him and that he had to get out of his own way."

Horschel finished T12 at the Valspar Championship, then notched his best result of the season, a T7 at the Texas Children’s Houston Open. He could feel a win was coming, and a few weeks later, he shot a final-round 63 to win Corales, his eighth TOUR victory. It won’t go down as the best win of his career, but Horschel hopes it will be the one that kickstarted the best run of his career, filled with more wins and a major championship. Less than a month later, he finished T8 at the PGA Championship, his best result in a major since the 2013 U.S. Open. At 37 years old, Horschel believes his best golf is ahead of him.

The final hurdle is this week. He’s remedied most of the scar tissue from last year. The last demon to conquer is Muirfield Village with the same motto: play fearlessly, swing fearlessly. That’s easier said than done at Jack’s Place, which is considered one of the hardest annual stops on TOUR. It can tear a pro apart if they don’t have their game. Horschel knows the feeling intimately. He’s sure it won’t happen again. He’s better prepared to adjust his swing mid-round and confident the solutions are there. All that is left is to do it.

“I need to get redemption,” said Horschel, “which is weird because I won here in 2022 ... but it's a course that requires a lot of control of the golf ball, especially into greens and iron play, and the fairways are pretty generous, but if you miss a fairway, it's a challenge. So it's just nice that I feel better with my game.”