Hoey Set for Galgorm Challenge

Michael Hoey completes a hat-trick of years as Tournament Ambassador for the Northern Ireland Open in Association with Sphere Global and Ulster Bank this week with his enthusiasm for both Northern Irish golf and the important role the European Challenge Tour plays in players’ development unabated.

The 36 year old has been involved in the tournament ever since its inception in 2013 and has seen it grow to become the best-attended event on the Challenge Tour, with more than 30,000 fans turning out last year and more expected this week.

Since graduating from the Challenge Tour, Hoey has won five times on The European Tour, and he is excited by the prospect of being joined by more of his countrymen in the near future.

“We haven’t always had that much depth in Northern Irish golf,” he said. “I know we’ve had the tip of the iceberg in Rory (McIlroy), Graeme (McDowell) and Darren (Clarke) and it’s been unbelievable, but myself and Gareth Maybin have been the only others on The European Tour.

“We need a few more additions to that I think, but it looks like we’re going to get them pretty soon. Chris Selfridge has just turned professional and has done great. It looks like he’s going to be on The European Tour very soon and certainly he’s going to be on the Challenge Tour because he’s done well enough.

“Young Tom McKibbin (pictured below) just won the Under 12 World Junior Championships over in America and he’s played the pro-am this week, so he’s a great addition to our field.

“He’s doing what Rory did when he was that age by winning that, which is awesome. My coach Johnny Foster has a lot of young talent, not just Tom but a lot of other teenagers coming through.

“There are a lot of Northern Irish guys coming through, be they from Tom’s age through to Chris.

“I’ve played Challenge Tour myself so I know what it’s like. There’s a lot of good young players this week who will be wanting to get onto The European Tour, some of the older guys who will want to get back on, so there’s a lot of different perspectives this week from young guys to old guys to local talent to people from all over the world.

“I got on The European Tour in 2006 from finishing in the Challenge Tour top ten in 2005 but then my game wasn’t good enough to stay there.

“I came back onto the Challenge Tour in 2008, won a couple of times, was around 20th but not quite inside the top 20, but playing on the Challenge Tour for those years really helped me when I got back on The European Tour.

“But the standard on the Challenge Tour is really good and those years taught me a lot, having somewhere that’s very competitive and you play four rounds of golf.

“It’s a massively important thing and the standard’s getting better every week, the scoring’s really good and it’s a great tour.”

There's a lot of Northern Irish guys coming through and the Northern Ireland Open has a great atmosphere - it feels like a European Tour event with the crowds we get

Hoey comes into this week showing good form after reaching the quarter finals at last week’s Saltire Energy Paul Lawrie Matchplay, though he admits he is more concerned with making this week’s event as successful as possible than any personal glory.

“My golf is not that important this week,” he said. “Obviously I’d like to do as well as I can, but it’s a different position to be in as Tournament Ambassador, and the money doesn’t count towards The European Tour.

“Three years ago the guys up here got in contact with us and needed help from the government and needed a named player.

“I was able, because I was playing on The European Tour, to use my name and help with some funding for the tournament and I think that’s made a big difference, and I’m fortunate to have been in a position to be able to do that.

“Getting all the sponsors involved has been difficult, but Ulster Bank and all the other smaller sponsors have been great, and this year Sphere Global are involved as well which is fantastic, they’re a really successful company.

“It feels like a European Tour event with the crowds we get. It’s a great atmosphere if the weather’s decent, though it doesn’t matter how bad the weather is because a lot of people will always come out to watch. It’s one of the premier events on the Challenge Tour so I’m looking forward to it.”

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Shane Lowry in Dark Start

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Shane Lowry felt it was “a joke” that play started in a torrential downpour on the second day of the US PGA Championship at Valhalla.

Lowry was in the first group out at 7:30am local time but was unable to complete the opening hole before play was suspended.

And to make matters worse, the 27-year-old and playing partners Ryan Palmer and Bob Sowards were kept out on the course as officials believed the rain would clear quickly.

“I think to be honest, when we were playing the first hole, it was a joke,” said Lowry, who bogeyed the first two holes and went on to add a 74 to his opening 68. “You couldn’t see the flight of the ball after 150 yards.

“I called the referee over and said it to him but he said ’No, play on’. Then we were standing at the back of the first green for an hour, standing in the rain, nowhere to sit down, nothing to do.

“From there on it was just a grind for me all day. I’m obviously quite disappointed with the score I shot but it could have been a lot worse. I made a few par saves out there and my head was a bit off all day. The start that we had unsettled me a lot.”

The heavy rain also meant it was quite dark when play began and Lowry added: “It was their call and we had to deal with it. I feel like we should have been taken in. What was wrong with taking us in and starting an hour later?

“It was borderline playable. There was an element about it that if we were being picky, we could have said it was too dark.

“It set the tone for my whole day which was disappointing because, the golf I’m playing at the minute, I really felt I could go out there, shoot a decent score and put myself in a good position in to the weekend.”

Palmer shrugged off the conditions to add a second round of 70 to his opening 65 and finish seven under par, two shots behind clubhouse leader Rory McIlroy.

“It was tough when we teed off,” Palmer said. “I wasn’t quite sure if we should have teed off to be honest with you, you could barely see the fairway. ”It was tough when we got to the first green, we couldn’t get a clean lie with the standing water, so they couldn’t even squeegee it clear enough.

“We were questioning in the fairway why we had to hit into a puddle because the first green was already under water. They said, ’That’s just golf’. We’re like, tell the guy indoors that’s making the decision to come check it out, because it’s wet.

“When we got to the green, sure enough, it was casual water all over the green. They tried squeegeeing it and they couldn’t even do that for my line. We ended up sitting up there for 45 minutes in the (camera) tower with the volunteers taking pictures of all the water.

“Fortunately it lightened up like they said it would and we were able to continue. I was able to hit great shots coming in and birdied the last two holes. It’s nice to go relax this afternoon sitting at seven under going into the weekend.”

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Clarke Cut at Greenbrier Classic

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Darren Clarke carded a second round 73 to end hopes of a weekend at The Greenbrier Classic having signed for an opening round of 71 at The Old White TPC to finish outside the cut line.

Bill Hurley though provided his own fireworks at The Greenbrier Classic, shooting a bogey-free 63 that propeled him to the top of the leaderboard at 9 under.

The only military veteran currently playing on the PGA TOUR owned a one-stroke advantage over Kevin Chappell and Chris Stroud when he polished off the lowest round of his 2014 season. The significance of the day and what he accomplished in the scenic Alleghany Mountains was not lost on Hurley, either.

"Anytime you play good, it's great; right?" he said with a smile. "But certainly, there's special days of the year for our country, and ... being the only person playing this week who has served (in the military) ... it adds kind of stuff. So it's kind of pretty cool, I guess, to shoot 7 under on the Fourth of July."

And just as Hurley's military roots run deep, so do those of The Greenbrier, a sprawling, 710-room resort decked out in abundant red-white-and-blue bunting and nestled in the lush and verdant West Virginia mountains.

The resort, which has hosted 26 U.S. Presidents, changed hands between Conferedate and Union forces during the Civil War, and served as an army hospital during World War II. German and Japanese diplomats were interned here, too, and a top-secret facility to house Congress in the event of a nuclear attack was built at The Greenbrier during the Cold War.

So the synergy between the lieutenant and the location could not be missed on Friday.

By the time he reached junior high school, Hurley had known he wanted to attend the Naval Academy. It was the only college he applied to -- and luckily, he was admitted.

"Just kind of fell in love with the Naval Academy, and the tradition, honor, courage, commitment, all the ideals and the whole place really," he said. "It was definitely the right school for me."

Hurley was a talented golfer when he got to Annapolis, where he still lives, now with his wife and two sons. But as he is quick to point out, Hurley wasn't exactly an teenage phenom who would be putting a golf career on hold while he fulfilled his five-year service obligation after graduation.

"I obviously became a very nice player in college, but it wasn't like one of those sure things, like some of the guys out here who were pretty much going to be out here since they were 17 years old," he explained.

By the time he was a senior at the Naval Academy, though, Hurley was the No. 2-ranked amateur in the country. He graduated in 2004 with a degree in quantitative economics and began to think a career in golf might be a possibility after he got out of the Navy.

"That said, golf was completely a secondary kind of thing," Hurley said. "I was a naval officer first, and if you ask the people that I served with, they'd say that's for sure."

Hurley was first stationed on the USS Gettysburg in Mayport, Fla. But after six months, the Navy moved him off the ship so he could play amateur golf in what was a successful attempt to make the 2005 U.S. Walker Cup team. He turned pro in March of 2006 while still on active duty and took advantage of sponsor's exemptions and Monday qualifiers to play in six PGA TOUR events, making two cuts.

Hurley petitioned the Navy to allow him to be released and transfer to the Reserves, not unlike David Robinson did. The NBA great, who was 2 inches above the height limit when he was admitted to the Naval Academy, was placed in a Reserves program to train civil engineers and only had to serve a two-year commitment after he graduated.

But Hurley's request was not accepted, so in July of 2007, he was transferred to the USS Chung Hoon, which was stationed in Pearl Harbor. During that time, Hurley calls himself "recreational golfer," averaging a round of golf a month during the two years he served on the 10,000-ton guided missle destroyer.

Hurley was deployed twice, spending time in the Persian Gulf, protecting Iraqi oil platforms, as well as the Red Sea and South China Sea. The highlight was being the officer on the deck and driving the destroyer through the Suez Canal.

"(That) was awesome," Hurley said, grinning.

Once he completed his Naval commitment in 2009, Hurley spent about 18 months on the mini-tours before getting his Web.com Tour card for the 2011 season. A year later, after finishing 25th on the Web.com Tour money list, Hurley was a PGA TOUR rookie.

Hurley, who said the military taught him discipline and time management skills he now applies to his golf career, had two top-10 finishes on TOUR in 2012 but finished 151st on the money list. So he spent one more year on the Web.com Tour before regaining his TOUR card.

The 2014 campaign has been much more successful for Hurley, who posted his third top-10 of the season last week at the Quicken Loans National. The tournament, which is held at Congressional Country Club and hosted by Tiger Woods, has a strong military presence -- and Hurley has carried over the momentum this week.

"It's awesome," said Stroud, who played with Hurley on Friday and shot a 65. "... He went to the military and took off three, four, five years of golf and comes out and gets his game back and gets on TOUR.

"There's a lot to be said about that. He couldn't be a more solid guy."

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