Billy Horschel on His Return, PGA Tour Changes, and Advice for college Players

Thanks to our friends at Cisco, we were able to chat with eight-time PGA Tour winner Billy Horschel about his recent surgery, teh future of the PGA Tour, as well as his upcoming APGA Tour event in florida this week.

Billy, how has your return to action from hip surgery been this fall? How are you feeling?

My hip is really good. It’s been nice to get back out and play some golf. the perfectionist in me doesn’t take satisfactory results very well, and my first two events have been just okay, but I have to understand it’s only been six months since surgery.

We’re now a couple years into the Signature Event model. If you had full control over the PGA Tour, what tweaks would you make to the structure of the Tour?

Ideally, I think you should have about 25 events per year, and I would make every event equal. I don’t know if it actually works where every event has the same purse and offers the same number of points,because when you go to bigger markets – Chicago,Philly,New York,Boston,LA – they are going to put up more money because it’s a bigger market and they want to be the premier event.

But I say we go to a 25-event schedule where we try to make every event the same. Every tournament has a 120-man field.It’s a smaller tour, but it gives every member of the PGA Tour the full ability to play all 25 events. From the time I got on Tour, I’ve always said that it’s weird to not be guaranteed a spot in every open PGA Tour event as a member of the Tour.

If there is a way to create a tour where every full-status PGA Tour member is guaranteed to play every PGA Tour event that is open, it would benefit both the PGA Tour as an organization and the players themselves.

With the current structure of professional golf tours, as well as NIL changing the dynamics of collegiate athletics, what would your advice be to a college player who is deciding if they should turn pro or stay in school to develop for another year or two?

I had the opportunity to turn pro after my junior year of college but decided to return for my senior year. Four years is a very short period of time. It allows a person to grow and to learn about themselves. It allows them to learn more about the game and be more prepared for when they do turn pro.

Unless you’re a world beater – Jordan Spieth,Jackson Koivun,Luke clanton – and you’ve accomplished everything you wanted to do at the college level,I think staying in school is the right move.