Billy Hurley’s first Masters is a new chapter in a life that’s already seen everything

Really, it’s hard to talk to Billy Hurley about golf.

It’s not because he’s hard to talk to, or a tough interview, or anything of the like. He’s a writer’s dream. A service academy degree in quantitative economics begets that. Eloquent, forthright, honest, open — with a sense of humor. He’s the type to serve up the perfect answer even when the idiot interviewer rattles off some bumbling, non-sensical question. I know this first-hand.

No, no. It’s hard to talk to Billy Hurley about golf because there’s just so much more.

Do you ask about Billy Hurley, the lieutenant? That’s where he was just eight years ago. While Phil Mickelson had already claimed two green jackets and Jordan Spieth was dominating the amateur ranks, Hurley was stationed aboard the USS Chung-Hoon in the Persian Gulf. A military service background wasn’t uncommon in professional golf’s earlier history — Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan, and Larry Nelson all served — but it’s completely unique in the modern day.

The vast majority of Hurley’s 2005 Walker Cup teammates turned professional soon after the event — and made major championship debuts in the next couple seasons. Hurley was on a destroyer in one of the world’s most dangerous regions, managing surface warfare. The shock of change from warship to the PGA Tour is still hard for the 34-year-old Virginia native.

“Yeah, you know, standing on the bridge there in the Persian Gulf. I felt like I’d play professional golf, I’d thought I’d do OK. I’d have some success.

“But, man, I don’t know that I would’ve told you I would play the Masters.”

That kind of backstory alone would make Hurley. This is, of course, the son who had a family’s worst nightmare play out on national news just over 18 months ago. His father, gone completely missing without a trace, for eight days, before that son had to make an impassioned plea to the world on a Tuesday evening before the 2015 Quicken Loans National: Help us find Dad. They found him — in a library in Texarkana, checking his son’s scores in the event just around the corner from the Hurley’s family homestead in Virginia. And then they found him again, dead on the banks of the Potomac River a few days later.

A year later, Hurley won that very tournament where he made that impassioned plea — and now he’s here in Augusta, at golf’s biggest event, because of that win. And because of his dad — who he speaks openly about in a Players’ Tribune piece he penned about the man that introduced him to golf in early 2017. It’s been, undoubtedly, a road less traveled. The path to modern golf stardom doesn’t often take a detour to a few hundred miles off the Iranian shoreline. But after all he’s been through in a lifetime of experience just packed into 34 short years, his first tee shot on Thursday will usher in something of a new era for Hurley.

“Really, the win at Congressional was really the emotional moment — after everything we’d been through with Dad over the previous year at the time. It closed a chapter in my life. From then, it’s just really been about how we go forward.”

He’ll head to the tee on Thursday as the world’s 131st-ranked player — far from a favorite. But the cerebral, measured Hurley put himself in as good a position as possible to make an improbable run at a green jacket, leaning on Augusta legend Jeff Knox in the lead up to the event for some local knowledge.

“There’s real subtleties,” Hurley said. “Like most great venues, you learn something new about them every time you play. I feel like I’ve got a decent feel for it. We’ve gotten some good advice, mostly about the experience. Who wants to be here, how to handle that kind of stuff.”

Hurley gets his first ever Masters underway at 8:22 a.m. ET on Thursday morning. Will it be an emotional moment?

“I don’t expect it to be too emotional. But, hey, now that you’ve planted the seed.”