Billy Horschel's 37-Foot Eagle Opens Atlanta Drive's Title Defense, 6-4 Over New York

Billy Horschel has a habit of ruining New York's evenings. Nine months after his putter helped close out the inaugural SoFi Cup Finals against the same opponent, the Atlanta Drive GC veteran stood over a 37-foot eagle putt on the final hole of the Season 2 opener with the match tied and two points on the line. He rolled it in. Atlanta Drive GC beat New York Golf Club 6-4 on Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, at SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and the defending champions started their title defense without two of their three regulars and most of their lead.

New York had erased a three-point deficit in Singles and had Xander Schauffele inside 15 feet on the 15th green with a chance to force overtime. Horschel went first, and that was that. Schauffele's putt to extend the night missed right.

"I did it to them again," Horschel said afterward, per the PGA TOUR recap (opens in a new tab). It is hard to argue with him. Atlanta is now 4-0 all time against New York, counting last season's regular season meeting, both Finals wins last March and Sunday's opener.

A champion running on spare parts

The banner went up before the first tee shot, but Atlanta's Finals trio was mostly in street clothes. Justin Thomas was still recovering from lower back surgery in November and spent part of the Triples session in the ABC broadcast booth. Patrick Cantlay and Lucas Glover were also out, with Cantlay serving as a consultant from the stands. That left Horschel as the lone holdover alongside two alternates making their TGL debuts, Chris Gotterup and Corey Conners.

Gotterup's debut got weird before it got good. He broke his driver ahead of the match, borrowed the backup out of Conners' bag and still striped the first tee shot of the season, a 295-yard opener per ESPN. Not a bad way to introduce yourself to a league built on vibes and very loud music.

New York rolled out its preferred trio of Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick and Cameron Young, with Rickie Fowler sitting this one out. On paper, New York had the healthier, more familiar group. On the scoreboard, that edge lasted about eight holes.

The building itself had a new look. TGL expanded the GreenZone putting complex by 38 percent for 2026, to 5,270 square feet, and pushed the number of hole locations from seven to 12. Every club also got a regionally themed Team Hole played in every one of its matches this season, which turned out to matter right away. Each side started the night with three Hammers.

New York's hole, then Atlanta's

The first three holes were halved as both teams felt out the new greens. The first swing came at the fourth, New York's own par 5, the "Big Apple," played against a skyline and Statue of Liberty backdrop. Conners missed a putt from inside five feet and New York took a 1-0 lead on its home hole.

That lead held through the middle of the Triples session as Atlanta kept trading pars. The equalizer came at the eighth, where Gotterup chipped to tap-in range to win the hole and level things at 1-1.

Then came the Team Hole switch. The ninth was Atlanta's par 5, "Fore-O-Fore," and the Drive played it like they designed it. Fitzpatrick sent New York's third shot long, and Atlanta threw the Hammer right then, with Conners lining up an 89-yard wedge. New York accepted. Conners stuck it inside six feet, Horschel made the birdie, and the two-point hole sent Atlanta to Singles with a 3-1 lead.

That Hammer was the cleanest decision of the night. Atlanta waited until the opponent had already blinked, threw with a short wedge in hand rather than on a guess off the tee, and cashed it. It was the Hammer playbook that helped Atlanta lead the league in Hammer points a year ago, and it worked again with a mostly new cast.

The Singles squeeze

Gotterup kept rolling at the 10th, where Young missed his birdie chance and Gotterup converted his to push the lead to 4-1. At that point Atlanta had won three of the last four points and New York looked like it was playing for the second half of the season.

The 11th flipped the mood. Conners found the water off the tee against Fitzpatrick, New York threw the Hammer, and Atlanta wisely declined, conceding a single point rather than playing for two from a penalty situation. It was 4-2.

After a halved 12th, Young delivered the shot of the New York night. On the short par-4 13th, he drove the ball to roughly 24 feet and poured in the eagle putt to beat Gotterup and cut it to 4-3. One hole later, Fitzpatrick rolled in a 22-foot birdie on the par-3 14th to beat Conners and tie the match at 4-4.

That was a genuine collapse in the making. Atlanta had held a three-point cushion through 10 holes, and two straight long putts from New York had turned it into a coin flip with one hole left. The new GreenZone, with its extra pin positions and sharper contours, was giving up long makes, and New York had found two of them when it needed them.

Horschel from 37 feet

The 15th was a par 5, and the rotation set up the matchup everybody wanted: Horschel against Schauffele. With the Hammer in play, the hole was worth two points.

Horschel reached the green in two. Schauffele answered with a second shot inside 15 feet, which put real pressure on the Atlanta veteran to at least two-putt from long range. Instead, Horschel's downhill eagle putt tracked the whole way and dropped. Schauffele needed to match it to force overtime and his putt slid by on the right.

Horschel later said his only thought over the putt was to get it to the hole and give it a chance, and that he liked it with about five feet to go. That is the polite version. The less polite version is that he has now made the decisive putt against New York in two straight high-leverage moments and seems to enjoy it a little more each time.

Thomas, watching from the booth instead of the tee, framed the banner night in bigger terms. "Being the inaugural winner is a big deal," he said, adding that nobody could take that banner from the club.

What it means

The numbers tell a tidy story. Atlanta won six points on just four holes: one at the eighth, two on the Hammer ninth, one at the 10th and two more on Horschel's eagle. New York won four points from four holes, including the conceded 11th, and never got a Hammer to pay off. That is the whole margin. Atlanta turned its two best moments into four points, and New York's best stretch only ever paid one point at a time.

For Atlanta, the bigger takeaway might be depth. Gotterup won two holes in his first TGL match, Conners hit the wedge that set up the Hammer birdie, and the defending champions still won with Thomas, Cantlay and Glover all unavailable. That is a useful thing to know about a five-match regular season in which every point counts toward a top-four playoff spot.

For New York, the loss stings in a familiar way. Last season's Finals were decided by one point in both matches, and this one came down to the last putt again. Young's eagle and Fitzpatrick's birdie showed the ceiling of this group. The early miss at the Big Apple and the water at 11 showed how thin the margins are.

The standings after one night of Season 2 are simple: Atlanta sits at 1-0 with two points, New York at 0-1, and the other four clubs had yet to tee it up. Atlanta's next match is Jan. 6 against The Bay Golf Club. New York returns Jan. 13 against Jupiter Links Golf Club.

The full match page is on tglgolf.com (opens in a new tab).

Sources: TGL, PGA TOUR, ESPN, Golf Magic, Field Level Media, PA Media. More TGL coverage on Undrafted.

Atlanta went into the new season with a target on its back and a depleted lineup. It came out of the opener with a win, a new pair of reliable alternates, and the same closer it had in March.

Photo: TGL.