A cute moment took place Tuesday in Dubai during Billy Herschel’s press conference ahead of the DP World Tour Championship.
“It’s their Tour Championship. It’s their last event of the year,” Horschel said during his first answer. Almost immediately, a reporter prompted him with a pointed question:
You say it’s their championship, but you could easily say it’s our championship, couldn’t you?
Point well made. Horschel is a member of the DP World Tour and has been the last few years. He’s been outspoken about the value of the DP World Tour and has raved about his experiences playing abroad. But his response provided the ultimate truth: it’s not his primary tour.
“Yeah, I do use the words we and theirs and sometimes I put myself in that world of the member of the DP World Tour,” Horschel replied. “But listen, I support this tour. I love this tour. I think the world of this tour. But at the same time, I don’t support this tour 20-plus events out of the year.”
While that may be accurate, Horschel supports the DP World Tour more than any other American-born top professional. He’s played French Opens, the Irish Open, the Scottish Open on repeat. He’s played in Germany and often in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. All of which made for another fantastic follow-up in the press conference:
Are you surprised that more of your peers don’t follow your path in that respect?
Thus stands one of the cruxes of the modern PGA Tour, its pursuit of foreign investment and its strategic alliance with the DP World Tour. The PGA Tour, largely based in America, is filled with professionals who don’t want to leave home for more than two or three weeks a year. It’s an issue Rory McIlroy — perhaps the game’s biggest global star not named Tiger Woods — has made his own personal crusade in recent years. The belief in the potential of an F1 Racing-like Tour that brings a true cohort of the best players in the world to international destinations, not just a couple top pros.
Horschel tends to agree. He sees immense value in being an elite-level professional and bringing your game abroad. He doesn’t blame his American golf colleagues for not doing it, especially when pro golf riches exist in your backyard, but he sees benefits some of his fellow Americans may not realize, and he listed them off Tuesday.
Better golfer
“Oh, [it’s made me] by far a better golfer,” Horschel said. “I mean, I think I’ve improved my game in conditions like playing in the Open Championship and going and playing Dunhill and doing that more often.”
Hard to argue with that given his T2 finish at the Open Championship this summer. The courses that the Europe-based tour presents come in a wide variety of conditions, climates, grasses, winds. There’s much more variety than what you find on the PGA Tour. Horschel has pointed this out before! And thinks he’s benefitted from getting out of his golfing comfort zone. But that’s not the only avenue of growth.
Better person
“I’ve become a lot better of a person, I guarantee you that,” Horschel said, “by having to understand different cultures. Try to communicate with people that may not speak English as well or I may not speak their language as well, so you try to communicate that way.”
Travel the world and prove it
Related to the above, Horschel has enjoyed the benefits of his game taking him elsewhere, seeing new places, experiencing different cultures and having the opportunity to back up the game you’ve developed at home. This is the second time his game has brought him to Dubai, for example, a place few American pros have ventured.
“I grew up watching the European Tour,” he said. “I grew up envisioning coming over here and playing these events, and even as I turned pro early in my career I still watched a ton of it and envisioned coming over and playing … my college coach said if you want to be a world-class player, global player, you’ve got to travel around the world and play well and you’ve got to win events to consider yourself a world-class player.”
Give back
Ultimately, much like he’s doing this week, Horschel sees events abroad as more than just a tournament to compete in or a check to cash. He views them as a chance to engage with potential fans he wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to.
“Like I said, I don’t fault [American players] for it but I think they would have — I think when you think about the game of golf, giving back and traveling around the world where people can watch and you see you take pictures with you, sign autographs, that’s one way to sort of give back to the game of golf.”
One final benefit!
You might pick up a soccer club.
Horschel’s time abroad has brought him closer and closer to West Ham United Football Club, a soccer team in the English Premier League. Horschel’s tour bag now sports the West Ham logo, which gets local fans all riled up whenever he plays in the U.K.
Brooks Koepka cut his teeth on the Challenge Tour and played all across Europe when he was coming up in the game. His club? Manchester United, the result of attending a match with Thorbjorn Olesen a decade ago.
Could Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas benefit from the same sort of love by leaning into a soccer club? Absolutely. They’ve invested in Leeds United in recent years. Now they just need to get serious about slapping that logo somewhere we can all see it.
