The spectacular story of Billy Hurley III; the all world Clayton Kershaw gets rocked, some baseball stuff

Thirty four year old Billy Hurley III won his first PGA tournament in 104 starts at the Quicken Loans National at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, MD. and clinched a two year exemption on the PGA Tour, he will have his tour card for the next two years, he qualified for this year’s 145th Open Championship at Royal Troon in Scotland, July 14th-17th, this year’s 98th PGA Championship at Baltusrol, just outside of NYC, July 28th-31st, and he qualified for next year’s 81st Masters, April 6th-9th, 2017, at Augusta National.

Hurley shot -17 to win by three shots over 53 year old Vijay Singh, firing a 69 in the final round yesterday with two hugely clutch shots, one a 35 yard chip in for birdie on No.15, and a 30 foot birdie putt on 16. He cruised in with solid pars on 17 and 18 to capture the $1.8 million first place check and all the benefits that went with winning the tournament.

Hurley’s story is amazing actually. He went to the Naval Academy, graduating in 2004,  and served for five years in the Navy upon graduation, including a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf. This tournament, sponsored by Tiger Woods, was all about the military, so it was pretty fitting that an ex-military man won this event. Hurley had told a friend when he was at the Naval Academy that he was going to play on the PGA Tour one day. His friend laughed. 

Hurley’s story gets even deeper as it’s almost a year after his father, William Hurley Jr.,  went missing from their home in Leesburg, Virginia, and then two weeks later shot and killed himself. A very emotional Hurley talked to Peter Kostis of CBS after the round and you could feel what this victory meant to him. All of his emotions came out in his post round interview. He was there with his wife, and three children, one an adopted child from an orphanage in Honduras.

Hurley was playing on a sponsor’s exemption after losing his PGA Tour card last year amid the grief that consumed him during his father’s disappearance and after his death.

Hurley is not sure he’s playing at the Open Championship because his sister is getting married in Virginia that weekend. But he’ll definitely be at the PGA Championship and at Augusta National in 2017. And he’s quite a player who looks to have some serious clutchness about him. With the tragic flooding in West Virginia that caused 25 or more people to lose their lives and washed out the Greenbriar Classic in two weeks, it was nice to see something positive happen. 

It’s a special story about Billy Hurley, and, to go along with his moving story, he played spectacular golf and closed the deal when he had to. Storybook stuff.

Kershaw could be the all time greatest at some point, but not last night

Clayton Kershaw came into last night’s game at PNC Park versus the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 20:1 strikeout to walks ratio. The previous all time record was set in 2014 by Phil Hughes of the Minnesota Twins at 11.5:1. The game on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball, featured Kershaw and his 141 strikeouts against 7 walks for the season. He was facing 23 year old Chad Kuhl, pronounced Cool, whom the Pirates had just called up from triple A Indianapolis for this game due to a slate of injuries to their starting pitching. 

Kershaw pitched 6 innings, allowed 9 hits, four earned, with two walks and four K’s. He now has 145 strikeouts to 9 walks, a 16:1 ratio.  He has electric stuff no doubt. His fastball was running up at 95 and his curve is harder to hit than Kenyan Drake in the open field. But he got rocked a little bit in the bottom of the second as Adam Frazier hit an RBI single off of him, which also loaded the bases, then David Freese hit a base clearing double to put the Pirates up 4-0. The Pirates got great pitching and competitiveness from Kuhl, who went five against a good Dodgers lineup and gave up four hits, three runs, with four walks and five ring ups. When the Pirates were hitting Kershaw pretty hard, a Pirates fan held up a sign that read, “Kershaw ain’t Kuhl.” It was beautiful. Kershaw is still the best in baseball, and could be one of the top two or three of all time before his career is over, but the Pirates and Kuhl got the better of him last night at PNC Park. 

Jose’ Fernandez

23 year old Jose’ Fernandez is already a phenom, and he did nothing to hurt that reputation yesterday in a Miami Marlins 6-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs at Miami. Fernandez struck out 13 Cubs and now has 6 career games of 13 strikeouts. There are only seven other 13 strikeout games in Marlins’ history. That’s a total number amongst all of the pitchers in the Marlins’  27 year history. That’s spectacular. Fernandez’s ERA in his last 9 starts is 1.18 and he has allowed no more than 1 earned run in eight of them. He’s 24-1 at home and he’s won his last seven home decisions. He’s the first pitcher in the Modern Era of baseball, since 1900, to win 24 of his 25 decisions at home. He moved to 10-3 on the season with a 2.28 ERA with 30 walks and 138 K’s, a 4.6:1 strikeouts to walks ratio. Shows how good Kershaw’s numbers are when you’ve got a stud like Fernandez, who strikes out 13 and walks three and is still a a long way behind Kershaw in that category.

The Marlins moved to 41-35 on the season and are just three back of the first place Washington Nationals in the National League East and tied with the New York Mets for second place. The Mets are 40-34 and lead the NL Wild Card, while the Marlins are 41-35 ball. The Mets are at .541 winning percentage, while the Marlins are at .539. Quite a story developing in South Beach.

The Long ball is back

There were 52 home runs hit yesterday in major league baseball. One of the most dramatic was Colorado Rockies’ slugger Mark Reynolds’ 468 foot shot that beat the Arizona Dbacks, 9-7, in the bottom of the ninth inning. The 52 homers were the fourth most hit in a day/night in Modern Era major league baseball history. The most was 62 on July 2, 2002, the second most was 54 hit on July 11, 2006, and the third most was 53 on August 13th, 2004. Maybe the roids are back. It’s kind of nice to see some serious hitting this year though.