It's been a year to remember for Gary Hurley. Easily the best of his career to date, but hopefully one that will set up bigger and better things for the future.
At this time last year, he was ranked 1332nd in the world. Twelve months later and he has jumped 840 places to 492nd.
Starting 2022 playing on the Alps Tour, Hurley would finish in the top five on the Order Of Merit - earning him a place on the Challenge Tour. That in itself would have been enough of an achievement for the Waterford native but much like any dedicated pro, he decided to go again before the year was out.
Hurley - who is most often remembered as a part of the 2015 Walker Cup Team - opted to head for Q School and one last roll of the dice before 2022 came to a close.
It was not an easy week, however. The standard four-round tournament was now swelled to a behemoth 6 round qualifying run in a field littered with touring pros who had won events across the major tours. The daunting nature of playing six rounds did not phase Hurley however as he performed consistently across the week in Spain to clinch a top-25 spot. In so doing, he would claim a much-coveted card for the DP World Tour in a significant upgrade to his Challenge Tour card.
"Make hay while the sun shines" as the old saying goes and Hurley embraced it fully. With two more tournaments on the tour remaining in the year, the Aglish man headed for South Africa for the Open Championship as well as the Alfred Dunhill Championship, followed by the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open.
In those three events, Hurley was T49, T50, and most recently T14 in Mauritius. He described his rollercoaster year as "amazing", saying that he "started on the Alps Tour this year, had no status on Challenge [Tour], had a few invites and did well in a few of them. I went to Q School and got my card, it was a fairy tale year from the outside looking in really".
It might seem like a fairy tale to the onlookers, but Hurley isn't at all surprised by his success. Having struggled with executing at times, Gary linked up with Dr. Ed Coughlan, a performance coach from Cork who Hurley has credited with changing his life.
"I got his number from a friend, and I just cold-called him. I was extremely honest with where I was at - I was in a very fragile spot - so I was very open about how I need to either find a way of doing it differently or else stop doing it totally. After that phone call, he was amazing. He said 'Whatever you want to do, I want to help you. If you don't want to play golf anymore, I still want to help you because we need to repair some of this stuff. This has had a real impact on your life'. I had a lot of scar tissue throughout the years, and he [Coughlan] was really in it. He said we'll do it through golf, we're going to go out and play nine holes and chat.' It was nothing to do with golf or where I was hitting the ball, it was just the medium we were doing it through instead of being in an office."
Hurley says he was in a place where he was hating golf, he didn't want to see his friends playing and wasn't able to see them enjoying it because of how he was feeling at the time, but that first contact with Dr. Coughlan in 2019 turned all that around.
If you listen to Gary speaking these days he regularly touches on "being open" to all the options and decisions that are available. This is solely thanks to the relationship with Coughlan and has been the difference maker on the fairways for Hurley. He says it's not an easy process and indeed one that can expose you to some bad moments, but when all things are considered it's for the best.
"Right now, I've done so much work on it. I had to be vulnerable in so many moments this year. When you are vulnerable with it - like my last day in final stage [Q School] I was amazing with my behavior. I was just me on the course. I decided I'm just going to go out and enjoy it and have a good day. When its time to hit a shot I'm going to be fully engaged and fully free, just allow it to happen. If I hit it in the water or hit it in the hole I'm not going to let that define me."
With his toughened mindset and a tour card in his back pocket, Hurley is now ready to take on 2023 with a renewed sense of vigour but before that, there are some more important things on the horizon - primarily a couple of weeks to put the feet up.
"I'm just going to take some time off and put the clubs away. I want to let my body recalibrate itself back to normal. Then go again in January whenever the time comes"
If you want to hear more from Gary, he sat down for an extended interview with WLR SPort on the week he earned his DP World Tour Card.
