Zhang has a new instructor ahead of the first women’s major of 2024.
THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Rose Zhang told Golfweek that she has a new instructor ahead of the 2024 Chevron Championship.
Todd Anderson, director of instruction at the PGA Tour’s Performance Center at TPC Sawgrass, has stepped in to help one of the LPGA’s hottest young stars.
George Pinnell has guided Zhang for the better part of a decade, and the pair knew this day would eventually come once she got out on tour. Pinnell runs a successful academy in Rowland Heights, California, and that responsibility along with some health issues keeps him from being able to travel as much as Zhang might need.
“George is probably going to Wilshire next week,” said Zhang of the tour’s next stop. “We’re still so close. He’ll be a mentor. He’s seen my swing for the past nine years.”
Zhang’s best friend from high school, Nicole Zhang, recently joined Pinnell’s coaching staff.
Billy Horschel jokes with golf instructor Todd Anderson on the practice range ahead of the 2023 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club. (Photo: Katie Goodale-USA TODAY Network)
Rose said Anderson came recommended by her team and the pair met for the first time at TPC Sawgrass earlier in the year. Anderson also attended Capitol One’s The Match. They’ve mostly worked on short game and putting so far and are still getting a feel for each other. Anderson also works with Billy Horschel, whom Zhang met during her initial visit.
“He’s is very straightforward, which I appreciate,” said Zhang of Anderson. “He has a very genuine passion for helping players get better. And he’s very open-minded, so he’s not exactly very egocentric and is willing to hear what you feel and what your thoughts are. So that open mindedness helps a lot. Because, for me, I think it’s important for the player to understand what he or she is doing. And the coach aids to that.”
Zhang has two top-10 finishes in four LPGA starts and recently wrapped up her winter quarter at Stanford. She’s currently taking a break from classes.
“Usually when celebrities do tournaments or events they show up and leave … the guys all believe Billy is in their corner.”
Billy Horschel gets it.
Is he cocky? Maybe, but no one should question that as soon as he made it, Horschel began figuring out how he can give back to the game that has provided him so much.
This week, the third annual Billy Horschel APGA Invitational is being contested (Oct. 18-20) at Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Florida, where 18 of the top APGA Tour players will compete for three days and have the chance to network and engage with key sponsors and industry leaders. Horschel also hosts an AJGA event too, and in both situations he doesn’t simply lend his name to the billboard and show up for the prize-giving ceremony.
“Usually when celebrities do tournaments or events they show up and leave,” said Ken Bentley, one of the founders of the APGA Tour. “Following the first round of the first tournament Billy did for us he was on the putting green playing putting games with the guys for dollars. They were on the green until dark. Billy gave each player his phone number and email address and said he was going to do all he could to see that the guys got to the next level. In telling the guys this he had the same level of determination and commitment in his eyes that he has when he’s trying to win a tournament. The guys all believe Billy is in their corner.”
So, what made Horschel “get it?” And why did he choose the APGA as a way to give back? His longtime instructor Todd Anderson offers insights while explaining Horschel’s higher purpose.
“He’s not the kind of person that does it to get notoriety for it, he does it because he cares and because he wants to make a difference in the people he comes in contact with, and I really respect that about him,” Anderson said. “I see other people going out there trying to do things to get attention, but he doesn’t do that. He wants to see the minority professional golfers succeed and be a part of the PGA Tour. He wants to help develop junior golfers by giving them opportunities that he didn’t have. He does a lot of things for charity to help other people, just because he really cares, not so you or anyone writes a story about it, but because he wants to make a difference in the people that he’s around and the things that he sees that need to be changed.”
Ask Horschel and he will tell you that he gives his time, money and resources for a variety of reasons.
“COVID happened,” he explained. “A lot of guys were struggling to have a place to play. I got to know Willie Mack and we have something in common in that his family wasn’t well off and mine wasn’t either. Some of our experiences were different but I thought to myself, if I hadn’t gotten an opportunity to go to Florida and play well and get sponsorship opportunities from equipment companies, where would that money have come from for me? My parents couldn’t have supported me. Maybe some friends would’ve supported me for a year or two but where would that financial aid have come from? If things had played out differently for me, I could’ve been in their (APGA members) shoes. That was the first thing.”
Billy Horschel poses for a picture with eight APGA Tour members during a visit to PGA Tour Academy in 2018.
Horschel barely takes a breath before he delves into the second reason he chose to support the APGA, and his response is telling.
“For the game of golf, we’ve made strides but we can still make golf more inclusive,” he said. “To grow the game, we need to get more minorities in. That’s where there is room for growth. That’s just a fact. That’s what the numbers say. It was a perfect scenario because I thought these guys have the ability to change the way golf is looked at and change the way who plays it and change the opportunities in people’s lives. The one way to do that is to support them and make a tournament that allows them to play for more money, and bring in sponsors that are looking to change their charity side and be a part of it. They can meet these guys and see how good they are. One of these guys – Willie is going to be on Tour in a year or two – but they are going to change the way golf is.
“There is someone who is African-American and sees me play golf, that’s cool. But if they see someone who looks like them play golf that’s going to percolate interest more. That’s just a fact,” Horschel continued. “And then when he sees that Willie has a similar background to the way we were raised, if he can make it, I can make it. I want to be involved in golf because I want to do what he’s doing. That’s why basketball and football have been so successful. That’s why it was something I wanted to be part of and have a little bit of a piece of trying to help grow the game of golf. Am I going to be the one that is going to get more minorities involved in the game of golf? Probably not. But I can support the guys that will have a bigger influence on getting them involved in golf and backing those guys to be successful and hopefully with their success they are able to have an outreach to grow the game of golf. Whether you play professionally or recreationally, it can open so many doors. Even if these guys don’t make it, they can have connections with people in the business world that can help them on the next path in life. It’s huge to be able to influence someone’s life and make it better for them down the road.”
There are currently just three Black golfers on the PGA Tour: Tiger Woods, Cameron Champ and Joseph Bramlett.
Mack III, who played at Bethune-Cookman, a historically Black college in Daytona Beach, Florida, is a two-time winner of Horschel’s event and earned his Korn Ferry Tour card in December. Horschel sent the first congratulatory text. “No one in professional golf has done more for me than Billy,” Mack said.
Horschel recalls meeting Mack at the Farmers Insurance Open in 2019, where Mack and some of the other APGA members showed him a picture they’d taken at TPC Sawgrass when they had toured the PGA Tour Academy there.
“I was shocked I didn’t remember it,” Horschel said. “Willie and Kamaiu (Johnson) started working with my teacher. Hanging out with them, listening to their stories all played a part in me wanting to support their journeys.”
Shortly before Mack headed to Q-School, he was working with Anderson and mentioned to Horschel how he hadn’t been able to play as much due to an injury to one of his fingers.
“I said to him, ‘This is probably a blessing in disguise that you got hurt. You’ve been going a lot the last couple of years. You haven’t had a time to recharge your batteries and come back with a new focus.’”
After Horschel texted congratulations, Mack wrote back, “You were right. That talk after my lesson was massive.”
Mack struggled this season on the Korn Ferry Tour but recently advanced through the first stage of Q-School and is hard at work on his game. He’s not going for the three-peat this week at Horschel’s APGA event but told him he may pop out to root the guys on. That means someone else will go home with the trophy and a check for $50,000 from the $150,000 purse.
“I have a number in mind that I want the purse to get to,” Horschel. “I want to keep making it bigger and better.”
DUBLIN, Ohio – Swing instructor Sean Foley likes to say that the relationship between PGA Tour pros and their coaches should be measured in dog years.
That’s because when Tour pros hit a slump they typically point fingers at either their caddie or their coach.
“You can’t change your wife,” Foley joked.
Billy Horschel returns to Muirfield Village Golf Club this week as the defending champion, but his game has soured since he claimed his seventh PGA Tour at the Memorial last June. Horschel didn’t try to sugarcoat it when asked to assess his play during a pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday.
“The season’s been pretty bad, pretty abysmal, to tell you the truth,” said Horschel, who entered the week No. 108 in the FedEx Cup standings, with only the top 70 advancing to the FedEx Cup Playoffs, and reconnected with caddie Micah Fugitt earlier this month.
Billy Horschel walks the ninth fairway with his caddie Micah Fugitt during a practice round ahead of the 2023 Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club. (Photo: Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch)
But it has only sent the 36-year-old Horschel, who played on his first U.S. Presidents Cup team last fall, back to the drawing board with his longtime coach, Todd Anderson. The duo is approaching 15 years of working together, which is a lot of dog years.
In the fall of 2008, Horschel was on the verge of graduating from the University of Florida, where coach Buddy Alexander had helped turn him into an All-American talent. But Alexander also knew that Horschel would need someone to look after him on a full-time basis once Horschel turned pro. He recommended three potential coaches for Horschel to visit.
“I was the first one that he came to see, and he didn’t go see the other two, and we’ve been working ever since,” Anderson said.
In addition to the Memorial last year, Horschel has won a World Golf Championship, a Tour Championship and FedEx Cup (2014), and the BMW Championship, the flagship event of the DP World Tour. Horschel demands a lot of himself and those on his team, and he and Anderson, who he calls one of his best friends and a mentor, have developed a trust and confidence that have made their relationship thrive.
“He takes care of me like I’m a family member,” Anderson said. “He’ll pick you up on the way to the course, whatever it is. If he hears I have to take a shuttle to the course, he’ll say, ‘No, I’ll just come by and get you.’ It might be a mile or two out of his way, but he’s going to drive by and pick you up so you don’t have to take the shuttle in.
“If he goes to a major and rents a house, I’m always going to have a room there if I want it. If we’re going to the British Open, we’re flying together, I’m flying first class with him, and I’ve worked with I don’t know how many Tour players over the years, they’re not all like that. In fact, most of them aren’t like that.
“The other thing is, I don’t know if you want to print this or not – we have an agreement at the end of the year, he’s always given me a bonus every year I’ve worked with him, and I can’t say that for hardly any other Tour player I’ve worked with.”
But the relationship has been put to the test of late. This off-season, Horschel and Anderson attempted to make some changes to his swing that backfired. After missing the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Horschel and Anderson and the rest of his team engaged in a lively 45-minute discussion about the state of his game in the parking lot. When he got back to his hotel, Horschel’s frustration boiled over.
“I’m not a sappy guy,” Horschel said. “But I broke down and I cried a little bit.”
He and Anderson have diagnosed the problem and they’ve seen some encouraging signs.
“It’s getting closer, but it’s still a little bit of a challenge and it’s just some bad habits I’ve gotten into that we’re just trying to work out of,” Horschel said.
During the course of their 15-year relationship, Anderson conceded there have been rough patches for Horschel before, but they’ve always worked through them. He’s a big believer in staying the course.
“I think where a lot of players make mistakes is that they jump around from coach to coach. You look at the best players in the world, they don’t change coaches,” Anderson said, noting World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler has worked with the same coach (Randy Smith) since childhood as has Rory McIlroy (Michael Bannon) while Justin Thomas has had his dad as his coach his entire career.
“I think there’s a certain trust and chemistry that has to be established. I think that’s where a lot of these young players that jump around to different coaches, they lose that continuity,” Anderson said. “If you start jumping around to a bunch of different coaches and they start messing up the foundation that’s made you great, that’s when you really get lost, when you lose the foundation of who you are as a player. Billy’s always stuck with me and always kind of believed in the process that we would go through to try to get him back on track.”
And they’ll search for that track together with dogged determination.
NEW ORLEANS – Billy Horschel has Christmas morning energy every day of the year.
That’s how Matt Every describes his former Florida Gator teammate and it doesn’t get any more spot on than that.
But it isn’t just Horschel’s overcaffeinated Energizer Bunny routine that grates on some nerves. Conor Moore, the Golf Channel impressionist, once asked Horschel whether after conducting media interviews, if he doesn’t go back home or to his hotel and think ‘Why was I so honest?’
“Do you ever sit back and think ‘Why the f_ _ _ did I say that?’ ” Moore wondered. Horschel smiled and with a comic’s perfect timing uttered, “Every single f_ _ _ing day.”
“Why don’t I just say I’m not going to answer that?” Horschel said rhetorically to a reporter not long ago. “Because it’s just not in my nature. I just can’t. If someone asks me a question, I just have to give my true thoughts. There are times when I won’t because I’m not educated on a certain topic and I don’t want to misspeak. Inherently, I’ve always been the one who is the most opinionated.”
Nobody loves a know it all, but the 36-year-old Horschel attributes his willingness to engage to a trait passed down not from his dad, Billy Sr., a soft-spoken former foreman at a local construction company, but to his mom, Kathy, who has some fire in her belly.
“I think it gives me a great balance,” Horschel said almost as proudly as when he later detailed how his mom went back to college at age 50 to get her college degree while working a full-time job.
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Horschel’s combative side dates at least as far back as his seventh-grade history class when he just couldn’t resist debating one of his classmates.
“I made a point, and another student made his and then I made another one to refute his point and it was going back and forth for 10 minutes and I won that argument,” Horschel recalled. “My teacher said to me, ‘Did you ever think of being a lawyer?’ Not that I like to argue but I like to prove people wrong. It’s in my DNA. I’ve always been that way. If someone says I can’t do something, I’m going to do it. If they think their point is correct, I like to prove it’s wrong.”
Is Horschel the most misunderstood man in professional golf?
Billy Horschel plays his shot from the seventh tee during the second round of the 2023 Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. (Photo: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports)
“That’s a great question,” said Todd Anderson, his longtime swing instructor. “If people knew him the way I know him, they would have a totally different view of him. I think he’s misunderstood a little bit because Billy is going to tell you what he thinks. He doesn’t always tell you what you want to hear, which I respect, but some people don’t like that.”
Some people don’t like his bravado, his on-course temper tantrums, his outspokenness on any number of topics. The Shotgun Start podcast has dubbed him both Baton Boy for the number of times his clubs go airborne and The Town Crier.
But it’s a rep that seems outdated for a kid who rose from blue-collar roots and initially received only a book scholarship, the equivalent of $400 a semester, to Florida before outworking nearly everyone in the game and blossoming into a top-20 player in the world. He’s won at Jack’s Place, a World Golf Championship, playoff events, a FedEx Cup, the flagship event of the DP World Tour and finally earned a spot representing Team USA at the Presidents Cup.
He’s the type of guy who treated his college coach to a first-class trip to the Open Championship at St. Andrews and gives back at his alma mater as a volunteer assistant coach. He’s the type of son who bought his parents a home when they retired and cars for his brothers with his FedEx Cup riches. He lent his name to both an AJGA and APGA Tour event, but that barely scratches the surface of his involvement in those endeavors. Horschel arguably has been the most vocal supporter of promoting minority golf.
“Usually when celebrities do tournaments or events they show up and leave,” said Ken Bentley, one of the founders of the APGA Tour, whose mission is to bring greater diversity to the game of golf by developing Blacks and other minorities for careers in golf. “Following the first round of the first tournament Billy did for us he was on the putting green playing putting games with the guys for dollars. They were on the green until dark. Billy gave each player his phone number and email address and said he was going to do all he could to see that the guys got to the next level. In telling the guys this he had the same level of determination and commitment in his eyes that he has when he’s trying to win a tournament. The guys all believe Billy is in their corner.”
When Willie Mack III, a two-time winner of Horschel’s event, earned his Korn Ferry Tour card in December, Horschel sent the first congratulatory text. “No one in professional golf has done more for me than Billy,” Mack said.
So why is Horschel, who for a while had as many career wins as Rickie Fowler and Tony Finau combined, a frequent punching bag for critics and not beloved in the same way as those American stars?
Billy Horschel hits his tee shot on the 18th hole during a four-ball match at the 2022 Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. (Photo: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports)
When Horschel first arrived on Tour out of Florida, Anderson perceived his pupil as borderline cocky and conceded Horschel overstepped his bounds, making claims he should have kept to himself about how he was going to take the golf world by storm.
“I said, ‘Dude, you’ve got to tone back some of the things you’re saying.’ ” Anderson recalled. “You don’t have the credibility as a professional to go out there and make those kind of statements.”
With help from the likes of Anderson, who has served as a mentor of sorts for Horschel, he has toned down his act, especially when it comes to those debates he couldn’t resist with keyboard warriors.
“He’d get into Twitter arguments,” Anderson said, “and finally I told to him one day, ‘Why do you respond to these people on Twitter?’ You’re never going to solve anything; they’re just trying to wind you up and they’re just trying to get you into a situation to where they’ve kind of got you in the palm of their hand and you just keep going and going and going. Just ignore them; don’t reply to them. It’s not worth it. You’re not gaining anything by doing that.’ I think over time he’s softened his approach.”
Like Jon Rahm and Tiger Woods before him, Horschel has been labeled a fiery player, who wears his emotions on his sleeve. Every, on his podcast “Straight Down the Middleish,” recounted how in college he rooted for Horschel to lose at blackjack when they went to the casino. “Just to see what you’d do,” he said.
Horschel admits that there have been some fists into walls at more than one casino. On the golf course, he concedes his behavior at times embarrassed him. But those days are few and far between anymore.
“It’s tough as a player if you did something early in your career, right, wrong or indifferent, if you’ve grown and you’ve matured and you’re better about it, and you slam a club or you drop the ‘F bomb’ or something. Let’s be honest, everybody is slamming clubs. Everybody is dropping the ‘F bomb.’ But it seems like certain guys kind of get picked on for doing it and kind of get held to a different standard than others,” Anderson said. “If Tiger slams a club or somebody like that slams a club, it’s OK. But Billy does it and it’s like breaking news.”
Billy Horschel hits a chip shot on the third green during a four-ball match at the 2023 Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. (Photo: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports)
Horschel has worked with Dr. Bhrett McCabe on the mental side of the game and become a dependable closer – finished off his seventh Tour title at the Memorial in June with ruthless efficiency – but the goal isn’t for Horschel to control his emotions.
“We’re trying to process through them,” McCabe said. “There’s times that he’s excited and times that he’s fired up and that’s cool. It doesn’t matter what you’re feeling, you can still execute the game plan that you want to execute. You can be stressed, you can be frustrated, you can be in between swing feels, but we can still come to a clear intention of what we want to do on every shot. That should never change based on what we feel. So much clutter that you fail to get intentional. The game of golf is a game of probabilities built around games of intention. That’s what makes it hard. Any lack of intention will show a crack in your stuff.”
Horschel’s temper still flares from time to time on the course and given his higher profile as a Tour winner he’s been caught on camera in less-than-flattering situations. Social media had a field day when Horschel slipped and fell on his butt at the Masters two years ago. The next day, he hit a bad shot at No. 7 and followed with a lousy chip. He slammed his club into his bag three times. Horschel later was advised by his management team to write an apology to the club for his behavior, but elected to post an apology tweet.
“I didn’t think it was unnecessary,” he said. “I thought it was going to bring undue attention to a situation that I didn’t think needed to be addressed.”
Last year, during the third round at the Masters, Horschel was under the spotlight again in a featured group pairing and pull-hooked his second shot into Rae’s Creek at the 11th hole and threw his club to the ground. Social media pounced again. ESPN’s Mark Schlabach wrote a story that ran under the headline: “Frustrated Billy Horschel loses his cool, tosses club during third-round play at the Masters.”
Horschel pulled the reporter aside and complained primarily about the headline.
“I get that writers don’t write the headlines (to their stories) but that was ridiculous,” he said. “When I logged on Yahoo for news the next three days, I’d see my photo there and some crap and I saw some Instagram comments.”
Horschel had a week to stew and during his pre-tournament press conference ahead of the two-man team Zurich Classic a seemingly innocuous question about his fiery on-course persona – When you have a teammate do you feel like you have an obligation to tone it down? – led to an epic rant.
“It just runs way too hot inside me, and I can’t stand not being able to play to the level that I expect of myself on a day-to-day basis,” Horschel explained. “There’s times that it boils over, and you know what, it happens.”
AVONDALE, LA – APRIL 28: Billy Horschel reacts after making a putt for birdie on the 18th hole during the final round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans at TPC Louisiana on April 28, 2013 in Avondale, Louisiana. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
Added Horschel: “This is going to sound blunt, it’s going to sound bad, but if you don’t like it, I honestly don’t care anymore. I’ve cared enough over the last 13 years of my career to try and please everyone that watches me, and you know what, I can’t do anything more. I’ve done everything I can. If you don’t like me for some reason, I don’t care anymore.”
At this point, Sam Burns, his partner in New Orleans, interjected: “If he gets running too hot this week I’ll just go give him a hug and calm him down a little bit,” Burns chirped with a smile.
The hothead storyline still pops up in his Google searches, but the press conference proved to be a flash point for Horschel.
“The question got asked. I answered it and took it to the next level. I’ve done that plenty of times before. I just had something I wanted to let out,” he said. “That little rant or whatever you want to call it was me just saying I can’t please everyone anymore. I’m happy who I am and I haven’t changed one bit since I was a kid. I’ve gotten smarter and learned how to do things better but I am who I am and I’m going to enjoy my life and not worry about what people say and think about me.”
Including the fact that he’s misunderstood?
“I think it irked me that I had that label for a little while but now I don’t mind it,” he said. “Not everyone is going to get who you are as a person. I’ve come a long way and I’ve been around people that thought of me as one way and when they spent some time with me they changed their opinion and it was without me trying to change their opinion. I’m OK being misunderstood. I’m happy with it.”
