Billy Hurley III playing golf this week in hopes of finding his missing father - Washington Post

Billy Hurley III said Tuesday he would not withdraw from the Quicken Loans National golf tournament this week in Gainesville, Va., even though his father â€" a retired policeman â€" had been missing for the last nine days. Hurley hopes his dad will see a TV screen somewhere with his son playing on it and decide to come home.

“I’m just hoping that there’s a story â€" that maybe he goes to pgatour.com to check my tee time or check my scores â€" and sees this and understands that, Dad, we love you and we want you to come home,” said Hurley, breaking the news in a brief statement to the media at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.

Tom Boswell is a Washington Post sports columnist. View Archive

“Maybe, you know, a bartender who served him dinner sees this story on Golf Central or whatever and we can get a hit on his location.”

Hurley’s father, a policeman for more than 25 years and a golf pro for more than 30 years, was described by his son as “not mentally unstable.” But on July 19, “my dad took some clothes; he took some cash; he got in his truck and drove away, and no one has heard from him since.”

Hurley is a 2004 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who served five years in the fleet, including two years in the Persian Gulf. As an officer, he considered 110-degrees-in-the-shade a normal day. He won awards as his squadron’s top “driver,” but not of golf balls; he handled a 10,000-ton guided-missile destroyer. He also won more than $1.1 million on the PGA Tour last season. As an officer or a world-class golfer, he’s tough. As a son, he was in tears as he spoke.

The 33-year-old Hurley has done hard things. His Navy degree was in “quantitative economics specializing in game theory,” a pedigree that screamed Wharton-to-Wall-Street-to-wealth after his service commitment was over. But he wanted something harder: a shot at the PGA Tour, a level no one had ever reached after a five-year golf layoff, in some years never touching a club.

But Hurley, who lives in Annapolis, has never done anything as hard as what he’s doing now: going public, laying himself open, trying to explain what’s inexplicable to him and his family, just for the chance that it returns his father.

“I intend to play this week in hopes that that somehow brings my dad home,” he said.

Hurley has facts about the disappearance. But he said he and his family do not have a hint, not a glimpse of causality.

“No one really knows why. It’s complete speculation as to why he left. He’s been married to my mom for 30-plus years. They still live in the same house I grew up in in Leesburg,” Hurley said. “My dad was a police officer here right in this area for 25, 27 years.

“He did Presidents Cup security detail on this golf course for every Presidents Cup that’s been played here [four in all]. Some of my first memories of the Tour [were] hearing him tell silly stories about player conversations inside the ropes from walking with them.”

Hurley was unambiguous about his father’s faculties: “He is not mentally unstable. . . . He works at the church that we grew up in, Reston Bible Church, that my family and I attended â€" that he attended for the last 35 years or something.”

The values Hurley learned as part of that upbringing were part of the reason he and his wife, Heather, have, in addition to their biological child Will, also adopted Jacob, an orphan from Ethiopia. The golfer and his wife also work with a children’s camp in Honduras and an orphanage in Ecuador.

“We have no idea why . . . I just found out about it yesterday,” Hurley said. “A police missing persons report has been filed in Leesburg.”

The world as we know it, or as we think it to be, sometimes seems to have spots marked with an inscrutable and often frightening “X.” The factor that can’t be anticipated, the quirk with outsized consequences, the bad medical diagnosis out of the blue or, for some people, the last straw â€" it can be anything. None of us want that “X” to materialize â€" in our friends or family or in ourselves.

Robert Frost wrote: “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces/ Between stars â€" on stars where no human race is/ I have it in me so much nearer home/ To scare myself with my own desert places.”

The pro golf community wants an ending as innocent as a man hitting his head and getting temporary amnesia, then coming home. Three years ago, Cal Ripken’s mother disappeared. A day later, she was found, unharmed, tied in the backseat of her car by an abductor. Such scary things can end fairly well. But there’s hardly a dread that hits us harder than “Missing Person” because it is so open-ended.

One of the tricks of sport is that it provides us with real but manageable anxiety â€" high drama with tolerable consequences. Hurley is an example. In 2012, he became the first service academy grad to reach the Tour. Then his feel-good story fell apart. His winnings in 2012 fell $165 short of staying on Tour. Married and in his 30s, he went back to the golf minor leagues â€" and earned back his Tour status. Last year, he won $1,145,299.

Tiger Woods, host of this event, is in one of those melodramatic, but benign, sports crises. He has lost his game and confidence. Let’s all say: “Tiger’s a wreck.” Except he isn’t. As the British Open ended with Jordan Spieth fighting for the third leg of the Grand Slam, Woods was snorkeling with his kids. By accident, he got back in time to see the playoff on TV. Tiger is suffering, but only in relative terms.

For real suffering, too real, we had Hurley on Tuesday, making sure the media had pictures of his missing father to show to the public.

“Thanks for your support,” he said.

Hurley has played well in this event, finishing tied for fourth in 2012 and tied for eighth last year. Normally, his family’s fondest wish here would be his first Tour win.

This week, they’re hoping for something they value far more than any prize.