This past Monday morning I found myself driving along in my van while listening to the local radio station. The announcer was going over the sporting results from the weekend and when it came time to report the recent events on the PGA Tour he said, “Some golfer by the name of Billy Horschel happened to win the BMW Championship yesterday in Denver.”
The announcer”s line took me by surprise. Sure, Horschel”s win was a bit of a surprise, especially in light of the fact that he had thrown away the tournament six days earlier on the final hole at the TPC Boston. While Billy Horschel isn”t a first-name golfer such as Tiger, Phil or Rory, he is a solid young golfer who won for the first time on tour last year in New Orleans. He has a top-five finish at the U.S. Open and is currently in a position to win the $10 million bonus that goes along with winning the Fed Ex Cup playoffs. Like the other hot-shot golfers of the modern era, he is not one of those unheard of linksters who happens to come out of nowhere to get to where he is today. Horschel was a four-time All-American at Florida, medalist at the 2006 U.S. Amateur, and when he played on the victorious Walker Cup team in 2007 he won two out of three matches against a young Irishman by the name of Rory McIlroy. In fact, Horschel made such an impact at the Walker Cup that McIlroy was quoted as saying, “His antics really pissed me off. He was so loud and obnoxious.”
Horschel and McIlroy get to renew their rivalry this week in Atlanta where the final rounds of the Fed Ex Cup Championship are being played out with just 29 golfers remaining. As earlier stated, not only is there a tournament to be won this weekend at historic East Lake, but there”s also a $10 million bonus on the line for the overall Fed Ex Cup champion.
Of course, the underdog of the top 30 who intrigues me the most is the golfer currently situated in 21st place. To paraphrase the local radio announcer, I would be talking about some golfer by the name of Morgan Hoffman. Hoffman”s most recent month of competitive golf on the PGA Tour is a tale that deserves retelling.
Morgan Hoffman turned 25 years of age in mid-August and was on the proverbial PGA Tour bubble. Hoffman grew up in New Jersey, won two New Jersey State Amateur titles as a teenager, and avoided East Coast winters by attending the International Junior Golf Academy at Hilton Head during his high school years. He attended Oklahoma State University, was the top-ranked amateur in the world during that time, played for Team USA in the 2009 Walker Cup Matches, and got into the field as an amateur at the 2010 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
Hoffman completed college in 2012, qualified for the U.S. Open at San Francisco”s Olympic Club that June, and turned pro immediately. He came in 29th at the National Open and then spent the remainder of the year Monday qualifying his way into Web.com Tour events. At the close of 2012, Morgan found himself in 19th place on the Web.com, good enough to get promoted to the PGA Tour in 2013. His rookie campaign was like that of a lot of other rookies with missed cuts and inconsistent play. Nonetheless, Hoffman hung in there throughout the season and finished 117th on the money list, just eight places inside the top 125 exempt golfers.
This past season was more of the same. Hoffman missed lots of cuts and his better finishes were still outside the top 10. He had a 16th at San Diego, a 15th at Phoenix, a 17th at the Players and a 16th at the Byron Nelson. In mid-August, with just one tourney left to play, Hoffman found himself ranked 114th on the tour. However, he missed the cut at the final event in Greensboro and it looked like he could fall outside the top 125 and lose his tour card for 2015.
As fate would have it, only 10 golfers jumped ahead of Hoffman and he headed to the Fed Ex Cup playoffs in 124th place. Saving the best for last, he finished tied for ninth at New Jersey and jumped inside the top 100, meaning he could advance onward to Boston for round two. Morgan finished tied for 35th at Boston, and that was good enough to propel him to 68th place. Now he suddenly found himself just inside the top 70 heading for round three at Denver last weekend. Even he acknowledged that this was well beyond his expectations.
Following rounds of 72-72, Hoffman benefited from the fact that there was no cut among the top 70 at Denver. He played into the weekend and caught real fire, shooting 62 on Saturday and returning on Sunday to shoot 63. Hoffman”s 62-63 for a 36-hole weekend total tied the tour mark of 125 previously set by Stuart Appleby at the Greenbrier (Appleby shot a Sunday 59 to win that week at Greenbrier). Hoffman finished in solo third place, had some help from unwitting golfers such as Sergio Garcia, and ended up jumping from 68th to 21st place in the Fed Ex Cup standings. Now Hoffman finds himself among the game”s top 30. Not only is he going to get another big no-cut payout, but he also finds himself in all of next year”s World Golf Championship tourneys as well as the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open.
While it”s hard to follow all that goes on with the Fed Ex Cup points and its movements, Hoffman could end up pulling out the whole $10 million bonus. If he wins at East Lake and Chris Kirk comes in 13th or worse, Horschel finishes fifth or worse, Rory and Bubba end up worse than third, and Hunter Mahan and Jimmy Walker don”t finish as runner-up, then Morgan Hoffman is the Fed Ex Cup champion for 2014. Stranger things have happened in pro golf.
Of course, you might just wonder how Morgan Hoffman can miss so many cuts at places like Puerto Rico, the Greenbrier, Palm Desert, and the Quad Cities while excelling at high-tension playoff events in New Jersey, Boston and Denver. Once he got inside the top 125, Hoffman figured he was just playing with house money. He was quoted as saying that he “has nothing to lose. I”m playing carefree and just go out and fire at pins.” Obviously carefree is good.
So there you have it. By playing relaxed, Morgan Hoffman was able to record two top 10s, finish third, his highest finish yet, and advance through all four stages of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs from his perch at 124th place. Yes, golf is the ultimate merit sport and sometimes you don”t have to be one of the game”s one-name wonders such as Rory or Phil to make a splash.
