Maybe you’ve heard of Billy Hurley III’s contemporaries, the current pros who were his amateur teammates on the 2005 Walker Cup team. Guys such as J.B. Holmes, Anthony Kim and Jeff Overton.
Yeah, not a bad threesome.
But while that trio has spent the last five or six years making millions on the PGA Tour and moving up to the Ryder Cup, Hurley’s been doing what most young American males haven’t done for the past 40 years — defending his country as a member of the U.S. Navy after graduation from Annapolis.
“I love the Navy,” said Hurley after helping lead his team to a 51 in Wednesday’s Children’s Hospital Classic Pro-Am at Black Creek. “If it hadn’t been for golf, I would have probably stayed in and tried to climb the ladder to become a C.O. of a ship.
“But,” he added with a smile, “I’ve told my friends since I was a freshman at the Naval Academy that I was going to play on the PGA Tour one day. Right now, I’m closer than I’ve ever been to that goal.”