Fantasy golf: Sleepers for the Memorial Tournament

When Billy Hurley III played in the 2005 Walker Cup, his teammates included Matt Every, Brian Harman and J.B. Holmes, all players he now competes against regularly on the PGA TOUR. But his path to the TOUR decidedly different than theirs. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2004 and had a five-year service commitment before he could even think about making his living playing golf. That Navy career took Hurley to Pearl Harbor as well as to the Persian Gulf, where he served aboard the USS Chung-Hoon, which is a 10,000-ton, guided missile destroyer that was charged with protecting Iraqi oil platforms. And often, Hurley was the man driving the ship, winning several handling awards along the way and even navigating the Suez Canal. Hurley, who competes this week in THE PLAYERS Championship, focused on a career at the helm early on in part because he thought his eyesight would preclude him from flying. Even when the Navy decided to allow pilots who had LASIK surgery midway through his stint at the Academy, Hurley stayed the course – literally. “We have ships at the Naval Academy that we use for training just there in the Severn River and Chesapeake Bay,â€� Hurley says. “And you know, the first time doing that I knew I was pretty good at it and just really enjoyed it. “It was just a lot of fun.â€� After graduation, Hurley was selected to be a surface warfare office – and learning to drive the ship was the first order of business. He says it normally takes nine months to a year, depending on sea time, to prove competency, which is followed by an oral examination by the captain, XO and other senior officers. “That usually consists of a lot of standard kind of questions and then some situational kind of questions and then some emergency procedures to kind of make sure that you know what you would do … in an equipment failure,â€� he explains. “There’s very regimented steps.â€� “It’s already laid out. It’s not guesswork. It’s if this happens, you do one, two, three, four. If that fixes it, great. If it doesn’t, then you do five, six, seven, eight. So you kind of have to have all that memorized and know that really like the back of your hand.â€� The destroyer, which in Hurley’s case was 509-and-a-half feet long, has two rudders and two huge screw propellers. The rudders can’t operate independently except in an extreme emergency. The screws are a different story, though. “So that’s obviously just like driving a speed boat on the lake, you turn the wheel to go left, you go left,â€� Hurley says. “But the unique thing about having two propellers is that you can operate those in different ways to, to kick the ship or back the ship up in a different angle. “So we call it twisting the ship where you could make one of the propellers go backwards and one go forward and the ship will kind of nearly just twist in place if you do it right.â€� Hurley, who picked up his first TOUR victory at the 2016 Quicken Loans National about an hour from Annapolis where the Naval Academy is located, says you can even make the 10,000-ton behemoth go straight sideways by twisting the screws and doing the opposite with the rudders. “It’s really cool,â€� he says. “It’s really cool.â€� The trip through the Suez Canal, according to Hurley, was more of a management situation “where you’re just kind of making sure you’re in between the buoys and stay in the middle.â€� Once, though, he was the man giving the orders as the destroyer got underway from Pearl Harbor without using any tugboats. “We twisted and twisted and kind of just came off the pier and then, and then drove out of the slip,â€� Hurley recalls. “So that was, that was one of the cooler things. “I think I made the captain a little nervous when I told him I wanted to try. Sir, I think I can do this without tugs. He’s like, y-e-a-h, I know you can. (And I was like) well, no, I can, like, we can do this without tugs. So we had the tugs obviously there … but we didn’t end up using any of their help. So that was really fun.â€� So does driving a car seem easy now that he’s maneuvered massive destroyers through the Red Sea and the South China sea? “Honestly, it’s very, very, very different,â€� Hurley says. “The thing about a ship is when you turn the wheel, it doesn’t just go. There’s a little lag time. So unlike driving a car where you can do nearly what you want immediately, you have to be constantly thinking ahead. “Then you have wind and you have current and you have all these other things that you’re paying attention to as well, that can help you if you do it right and can make it really, really difficult if you do it wrong.â€� Not that Hurley made too many mistakes.

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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — In what already was the toughest pre-cut round at THE PLAYERS Championship in 15 years, Justin Thomas and Bubba Watson managed to play bogey-free Saturday in ferocious wind on a day of far more spills than thrills. RELATED: Full leaderboard | High winds wreak havoc at THE PLAYERS The rain finally cleared out and the TPC Sawgrass got even more terrifying with gusts that approached 40 mph on a Stadium Course that can be punishing even in calm conditions. Where that leaves Thomas (69) and Watson (68) won’t be determined until Sunday when the second round is completed. The rain-plagued tournament is so far behind that 27 players have yet to start the second round. Thomas and Watson shared the clubhouse lead at 3-under 141. They left in a tie for 15th, and six of the players ahead of them had not finished a single hole. Kevin Kisner reached 6 under in his second round until missing a short par putt on No. 4 and going from rough to water for a double bogey on the next hole. He shot 74 and was at 2-under 142. Dustin Johnson birdied his final hole for a 73 and was at 142, with two double bogeys on the par 5s over 36 holes. The course was so saturated by rain that it took 54 hours, 16 minutes from Adam Schenk hitting the opening tee shot Thursday morning to Brendan Steele holing out early Saturday afternoon to complete the first round. Tom Hoge goes into Sunday with his name atop the leaderboard. He still has played only 18 holes. He opened with a 6-under 66 on Thursday and was tied with Tommy Fleetwood, who was even par through three holes when play was suspended. Those who spent more than six hours on the course Saturday held on for dear life, especially when they came to the notorious island green on the par-3 17th. Over two days, only four players hit into the water. On Saturday when play resumed, the first four players couldn’t find the green. Scottie Scheffler had the wind die and went long into the water. Xander Schauffele and Brooks Koepka caught a gust and came up short, as did Collin Morikawa in the group behind them. By the end of the day, 29 balls had gone into the water. The average score for the second round when play was suspended was 75.37, and it was certain to go higher Sunday morning. The average was 75.41 for the opening round in 2007, the first year THE PLAYERS was in May. The highest ever for the opening two rounds was 76.19 in 2000 when it was in March. Scoring tends to get lower after the cut. The highest average score for any round was 76.51 in the third round of 2005. “Insane,” Thomas said to describe the challenge. Keegan Bradley (71) spoke of hitting a 9-iron from 96 yards on the 12th hole dead into the wind, and the same club from 206 yards with the wind at his back on the par-5 16th. The forecast was for temperatures in the upper 30s when play was to resume Sunday morning and wind not quite as fierce but still challenging. Thomas thought he was going to end up on the good end of the draw when they started out Friday in soft, still conditions in the rain. Returning to 30 mph wind on Saturday morning to finish the round and then facing 18 holes of that in the afternoon? Not so much. “There’s always one person who play good on the bad side of the draw,” Thomas said. “I kept saying, ‘Be that guy.’ I’m very proud of myself today.” So many others went the wrong direction. Schauffele was 4 under for his opening round, two shots out of the lead, when he hit into the water on the 17th and did well to salvage a bogey. But on the 18th hole — playing so long into the wind that some players needed fairway metal to reach the par 4 in two shots — Schauffele drew such a bad lie in the rough that he advanced it only about 15 yards. From there, he hit into the water. After a drop, his pitch had so much spin into the wind that it rolled back some 75 feet back into the fairway. He finished bogey-quadruple bogey for a 73, and then shot 78 in the second round. Koepka was 3 under when he returned and was just left of the par-5 16th in two. It took him four shots to get down, he put his tee shot in the water on the 17th for double bogey and shot 72. He followed that with an 81, matching his highest score on the PGA TOUR. Asked to describe the 17th, Koepka said, “It’s luck.” He hit 8-iron from 205 yards on the 16th hole in the morning. He estimates his 8-iron on the 17th going the other direction went 105 yards in the air, and then some 20 feet to the bottom of the pond. Tour officials tried to prepare with easier pins for the second round, slightly raising the cut of the greens the last two days by not rolling them since Friday. The second round was to resume at 8:15 a.m. That will be followed by the third round, which would not end until Monday morning. The tournament still was likely to finish Monday evening.

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