By Jeremy Harness

Unlike most other professional sports such as football, baseball, basketball and hockey, golf season really never ends.

As proof of that, the 2014-15 PGA Tour season kicks off on Thursday at Silverado Resort and Spa’s North Course, only four weeks after Billy Horschel claimed the season-ending Tour Championship that earned him the FedEx Cup trophy and a healthy $10 million prize for doing so.

Horschel is not in the field this week, but defending champ Jimmy Walker, fresh off his first-ever appearance in the Ryder Cup, is.

In an otherwise-subpar performance for the U.S team in a 16.5-11.5 drubbing at the hands of the European squad, the third straight time that the Americans have fallen to Europe, team captain Tom Watson called Walker one of the few bright spots of that weekend.

The 35-year-old from Boerne, Tex., earned 2 ½ points for Team USA, including a half-point in Friday afternoon’s play while securing a tie with teammate Rickie Fowler against Europe’s vaunted duo, Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy, the only points that the Americans earned in that particular session that saw the cup begin to slip away from them.

He finished his Ryder Cup on Sunday with a 3&2 (led by three holes with two to play) win over Lee Westwood, a veteran of this competition who was a part of each of the past three Europe victories.

“The outcome wasn’t what we wanted, but I wouldn’t change anything that happened that week,” he said. “I think once you play in one, you really don’t want to miss it again.”

To help him get to this point, Walker jump-started his 2013-14 season by winning last year’s Frys.com Open at CordeValle with a 17-under total score of 267. Heading into the final round of the event, he trailed Brooks Koepka by three strokes.

Using a classic example of the saying “drive for show, putt for dough,” Walker used a deft putting stroke to eventually overtake Koepka with a five-under 66 to claim the title.

He sure didn’t do it with his driving accuracy. For the week, he hit just over 39 percent of his fairways, making him only the fourth tour player since 1983 to win a four-round event after hitting fewer than 40 percent.

But he certainly made up for it where it really counts: on the green. He led the entire field by an entire stroke per round in strokes gained while making a total of 446 feet of putts, including 24 putts longer than 10 feet, which is certainly a recipe for winning on the PGA Tour and has proven time and again to be the difference between a winner and the average player.

He used that momentum to catapult him to two more victories last season, the Sony Open in Hawaii in January as well as February’s AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

A relative unknown going to last season, he said that he has experienced a difference in not only his game, but also his appearance off the course.

“It’s funny, you get recognized more, especially after the year we had,” said Walker, who held the No.1 spot in the FedEx Cup for 36 of the 37 weeks last season, which includes a tour-record 30 consecutive weeks in the top spot, a streak that began with his win at the Sony. “But nothing has really changed for me as far as going about doing the things that I do, golf, how I do it, how I practice.

“I feel like I’ve got a good formula going, but I’m always continuing to try to get better, (and) still always trying to keep the pedal down and look down the road.”

Walker, along with Ryder Cup teammates Hunter Mahan and Matt Kuchar, is scheduled to tee off at 7:45am PST on Thursday and 12:45pm PST on Friday.