The shot of the day during the final round of the 2025 Valspar Championship might have come just as the leaders were hitting the course, and it came courtesy of a left-handed Billy Horschel.
Horschel hit his second shot on the par-5 fifth hole at the Copperhead Course into the left rough by a tree. Horschel didn’t have a stance from the right side, so he flipped around and hit a back-handed iron shot to 31 feet.
Horschel capped it off by rolling in the 31-foot birdie putt to get to 6-under-par and within two shots of Viktor Hovland’s lead at the time.
Horschel finished the tournament at 8-under par. After the round, he was asked about the lefty strike.
“I grabbed a 9-iron, hoping it wouldn’t go too far, and I was just hoping to get it up in the air and go straight,” Horschel said. “The funny thing was my little boy was about 50 yards in front of me just to the left on the cart path sitting down, and I had to yell at him to sort of get out of the way because I didn’t know exactly where this thing could go. Last thing I need to do is call my wife and tell her I just hit my son with a golf ball. But it was a hit-and-hope shot, and I pulled it off, and to make the putt sort of was with just sort of, I mean, funny things happen like that.”
He has struggled to start the season so far. He has just one top-10 in nine starts coming into the Valspar Championship.
He played well through two rounds of last week’s Players Championship before shooting a Saturday 77 to fall out of contention. While he was struggling in the third round at TPC Sawgrass, Horschel gave a brutally honest walk-and-talk about the state of his game on that breezy Saturday.
While Horschel has scuffled to start the PGA Tour season, he has been one of the stars of the inaugural season of TGL.
Horschel’s Atlanta Drive will face New York Golf Club in the TGL championship, which starts Monday on ESPN.
Perhaps Horschel will pull out the left-handed iron at the SoFi Center as he, Justin Thomas and Patrick Cantlay look to raise the SoFi Cup.
