It’s no secret that Billy Horschel can run a little hot on the golf course.
Some players wear their heart on their sleeve. Horschel wears his heart on his entire wardrobe. If there’s something bothering him, you can tell.
It’s a characteristic that sometimes rubs the golf world the wrong way. In 2021, Horschel had a club-slamming meltdown at the Masters, which went viral for all the wrong reasons. He later apologized for the episode, stating “the fire inside [him] sometimes runs hot.”
A little more than a year later, that fire still runs hot.
“My competitive fire burns the way it burns,” Horschel said ahead of this week’s Zurich Classic. “I envy Scottie Scheffler and some of these guys that they hit bad shots, they’re not playing well, you can’t tell. They’re just enjoying the game of golf and they’re having fun and laughing.
“I can be that way for a little bit, but 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. There’s times that it boils over, and you know what, it happens. I’ve apologized many times for it and I’ll apologize in the future for it, too, but that’s me.”
This week, Horschel is teamed up with Sam Burns. And although they both hail from SEC programs — Horschel at Florida, and Burns at LSU — they do make an odd pair, if for nothing else than their differing temperaments.
Burns, a two-time Tour winner, is not overly emotional on the course. He, like his good buddy Scheffler, is a cool customer between the ropes. Horschel is cut from a different cloth.
Regardless, the two should form a formidable duo in this week’s team event. Horschel has ascended to 14th in the Official World Golf Ranking with strong play of late, while Burns recently rose to the top 10 in the world for the first time in his career.
If things don’t go well though, don’t expect Horschel to keep his feelings bottled up.
“My fire is going to be that way the rest of my life,” he said. “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.”
Luckily, Horschel will have an even-keeled partner to cool him down should things go awry.
“If he gets running too hot this week,” Burns said, “I’ll just go give him a hug and calm him down a little bit.”
