Is Billy Horschel the most misunderstood man in professional golf?

NEW ORLEANS – Billy Horschel has Christmas morning energy every day of the year.

That’s how Matt Every describes his former Florida Gator teammate and it doesn’t get any more spot on than that.

But it isn’t just Horschel’s overcaffeinated Energizer Bunny routine that grates on some nerves. Conor Moore, the Golf Channel impressionist, once asked Horschel whether after conducting media interviews, if he doesn’t go back home or to his hotel and think ‘Why was I so honest?’

“Do you ever sit back and think ‘Why the f_ _ _ did I say that?’ ” Moore wondered. Horschel smiled and with a comic’s perfect timing uttered, “Every single f_ _ _ing day.”

“Why don’t I just say I’m not going to answer that?” Horschel said rhetorically to a reporter not long ago. “Because it’s just not in my nature. I just can’t. If someone asks me a question, I just have to give my true thoughts. There are times when I won’t because I’m not educated on a certain topic and I don’t want to misspeak. Inherently, I’ve always been the one who is the most opinionated.”

Nobody loves a know it all, but the 36-year-old Horschel attributes his willingness to engage to a trait passed down not from his dad, Billy Sr., a soft-spoken former foreman at a local construction company, but to his mom, Kathy, who has some fire in her belly.

“I think it gives me a great balance,” Horschel said almost as proudly as when he later detailed how his mom went back to college at age 50 to get her college degree while working a full-time job.

Horschel’s combative side dates at least as far back as his seventh-grade history class when he just couldn’t resist debating one of his classmates.

“I made a point, and another student made his and then I made another one to refute his point and it was going back and forth for 10 minutes and I won that argument,” Horschel recalled. “My teacher said to me, ‘Did you ever think of being a lawyer?’ Not that I like to argue but I like to prove people wrong. It’s in my DNA. I’ve always been that way. If someone says I can’t do something, I’m going to do it. If they think their point is correct, I like to prove it’s wrong.”

Is Horschel the most misunderstood man in professional golf?

“That’s a great question,” said Todd…