HONOLULU (AP) — Billy Horschel returned from five months away for hip surgery wanting to play three times to see how his hip and his game felt. His final stop was the Bank of Utah Championship, the last week in October, a tie for 11th that kept him at No. 40 in the world.

He knew it was going to be close without checking on the Official World Golf Ranking math, and it was. Even with a late invitation to the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, where he finished 15th, Horschel slipped out of the top 50 in the world by the end of the year.

He goes into 2026 without an invitation to the Masters, and with no regrets that he didn't add another tournament to try to assure being in the top 50 by the end of the year.

“Before Utah, I was thinking about playing Bermuda and Cabo (Mexico),” Horschel said at the Sony Open in Hawaii. “But I got what I needed out of my three events. I was trying to get back into the groove of things, see where my game was.”

And now?

“I'm betting on myself,” said Horschel, who has until the Texas Children's Houston Open to get back into the top 50. “My wife is always very honest. She said, ‘If you miss the Masters and don’t qualify for THE PLAYERS, you need to make sure you're not second-guessing yourself.' You make your decision, you make your bed. If I don't make THE PLAYERS or Masters, I'm not going to say I should have played.”

Horschel recalls a similar predicament at the end of 2023 when he was No. 63. He got off to a slow start and failed to reach the Masters. But he was willing to go to an opposite-field event in the Dominican Republic a week after the Masters. He won that, was runner-up at The Open Championship, won the BMW PGA Championship in England and ended the year at No. 16.