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SCOTTSDALE – If any PGA Tour player could be the poster child for loving the party atmosphere and rowdy behavior at TPC Scottsdale’s par-3 16th hole, Billy Horschel would be your guy.
When Horschel backed off his tee shot at 16, the boos rained down. But he didn’t buckle under the pressure and knocked an adrenaline-laced 9-iron to 18 feet. When he rolled in the putt for birdie, he egged the crowd on to cheer louder and tipped his cap. When a male voice screamed out, “I love you, Billy,” Horschel couldn’t resist breaking into a smile.
“I love making birdie at 16 and getting the crowd going,” Horschel said. “I like to play up to the crowd a little bit. I’ll chatter back to them once in a while if they say something, but it’s a fun event. I love coming to it and will be coming for a long time.”
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Horschel also continued to own the 16th hole. He entered the week tied for first with Chris Stroud and J.B. Holmes for the best score in relation to par at the hole since 2013 at 6 under. (He now trails them by one as both Stroud and Holmes birdied it both days.)
At 11-under 131 through 36 holes, Horschel is in contention for his first victory since the 2018 Zurich Classic (with Scott Piercy) after making birdie at 18 on Friday to shoot 3-under 68.
Horschel credits a range session with his instructor Todd Anderson on Tuesday for his stellar play this week.
“If you would have seen the way I hit it the last couple weeks and putted it, the tweaks were beneficial, a really big benefit to playing well,” Horschel said. “I know where my golf ball is going. My good swings are really good and my bad ones aren’t; they’re inside the golf course boundaries now.”
Horschel, ranked No. 40 in the world, poured in nearly 196 feet of putts on Thursday, including four putts of more than 25 feet en route to an 8-under 63. But he got off to a shaky start on Friday. A birdie at No. 1 and an eagle at No. 3 were offset by two bogeys.
“Scotty, my caddie, congratulated me on No. 5 when I finally made a par,” Horschel said.
“He didn’t have his best stuff, but he stayed patient,” caddie Scott Veil said.
That may be the biggest different between Horschel the 2014 FedEx Cup champion and the golfer he is today.
“As you get older, you learn not to get so worked up when things may not be going well or things feel off, you just keep plodding your way around the golf course and that’s what I did today,” Horschel said. “I think today, the start I had, maybe the Billy of six, seven years ago would have, you know, go birdie, bogey, eagle, bogey, you know, would have been a little more flustered. But I just stayed patient and worked it out to do some good stuff going in.”
Horschel is alone in third place, one behind Wyndham Clark and two behind the leader J.B. Holmes (13 under through 13 holes on Friday). What Horschel won’t be doing is getting a tattoo if he wins on Sunday. Horschel is an ambassador of PXG golf clubs and recounted a bet he made with Bob Parsons, the company’s founder, that if he won the Waste Management Phoenix Open in 2016, the first year that he used PXG clubs, he would get a tattoo.
“The bet was only good for one year. It wasn’t for the lifetime of our contract,” Horschel said. “But he can go ahead and get himself a PXG tattoo if he wants.”