PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – Eighteen months ago, Willard Hurley Jr. died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Earlier this week, Billy Hurley III wrote a 4,300-word letter to his late father, a heartfelt – and cathartic – first-person account ending with Hurley forgiving his dad for taking his own life. On Thursday, Hurley shot a 4-under 67 in the opening round of the Genesis Open. The low score, though it put him in contention at Riviera, seemed inconsequential. The letter, published on The Players’ Tribune, will likely be his most important act this week. Maybe not in golf, but certainly in life. “A step of healing for me,” Hurley said about his letter. You’re probably familiar with the backstory. In July of 2015, Willard Hurley went missing from his family. Billy made a public plea in hopes of finding him. Eventually, the elder Hurley was located in Texas, not only alive but watching his son play in a PGA TOUR event. But in mid-August, during the first round of the PGA Championship, it was announced that Willard Hurley had committed suicide. A year later, Billy Hurley III – ranked 607th in the world at the time — won for the first time on TOUR at the Quicken Loans National. Surrounded by family and friends from his nearby hometown, as well as from the nearby Naval Academy where he attended college, Hurley felt the flood of emotions. This week’s letter to his dad put those emotions into its proper context, with Hurley telling the story he wanted to tell. The story he needed to tell. “18 months ago, it was about my dad taking his own life by suicide, and not about the 62 years that he had lived,” Hurley said. “So I wanted to highlight how good of a dad he really was. Certainly, tragic and completely unbelievable that my dad did commit suicide, but there’s so much more to him than just that. “So we wanted to highlight that and then wanted, as far as me personally, there’s just closure in that. It took me a long time – and took me a long time to get to the place where I could even potentially write that. “And then the last thing – it was literally the last thing – that I edited and added to the piece was ‘I forgive you.’ “ Hurley was hesitant about the idea of the letter when first approached by The Players’ Tribune (the founding publisher is retired New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter). “Have you got another idea?” Hurley said in response. But eventually he warmed to the idea. He began working on the letter in October and added some more in December. In January, drafts were being edited. In one portion of the letter, Hurley recounts a practice session with his dad, who was trying to help improve the club position in his swing. Wrote Hurley: With all the changes, everything would feel foreign — almost as if I had never picked up a golf club in my life. It was infuriating. “Dad, are you kidding me? This doesn’t feel right at all.” You’d look at me, head tilted a bit, arms crossed. I knew what you were going to say. I knew exactly what you were going to say. “I don’t care what it feels like, Billy. Feeling is not reality.” I’d loosen my grip, let the club head hit the ground and just stand there. Feeling is not reality. Feeling is not reality. Feeling … is not … reality. Hurley, discussing that passage on Thursday, explained: “That’s where you think the golf club is and where the golf club really is often times feels miles apart. … “I think that he always taught me to try and play even-keeled, and I’ve kind of morphed that along the way and realized that when I was younger, even keel was never experiencing emotion, never being happy, never been happy. Now it’s like actually you have to experience the emotion, but you have to experience it and get rid of it. You can’t play golf too high and you can’t play golf too low.” Hurley agreed when asked if it was strange that his dad, who taught him such a valuable lesson, was unable to put that lesson into practice before taking his life. “My dad was a very black-and-white kind of guy, and that serves you really, really well in a lot of arenas,” Hurley said. “I think at the end of the day, one of the things that kind of led to his death was not being able to deal with whatever gray was going on inside his head.” Hurley acknowleged that he thinks about his dad during competitive rounds. He entered Thursday at Riviera expecting to play poorly, the publishing of his letter giving him an emotional jolt that he figured might be difficult to process. “I think that so much of our life was about golf and so much about him watching me play … It can make it hard emotionally to play,” Hurley said. “I guess thankfully I’m pretty good at departmentalizing. But I think that, definitely, currents of my life and currents of my golf game are from my dad. That’s kind of always there.” The reaction to the letter has been positive, Hurley said. He’s glad to have it touch so many people emotionally. “Unbelievable, just the amount of support and tweets to me, and emails and texts,” Hurley said. “Completely blew me away. I had no idea that it was going to be that well-received.” Off to a good start Thursday, Hurley will try to win for the second time on TOUR. This week, like many weeks in the past 18 months, has been an emotional one. But the full story is out there now, and his dad would be proud. CLICK HERE to read the full letter Billy Hurley III wrote to his late father on The Player’s Tribune.
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