It is both refreshing and curious to see an aspiring PGA Tour player’s LinkedIn résumé with an employment history that includes 16 years at Billy’s Egg Farm and its 35,000 cage-free chickens. Country clubs, not egg farms, are incubators of potential tour pros, yet Billy’s is the home turf of—dare we say it?—an egg-ceptional college player on the cusp of making the leap soon from college golf to the Korn Ferry Tour or the PGA Tour.
Puns could proliferate, of course, but they will be capped at only one here, for Pepperdine standout William Mouw’s humble blue-collar roots—and the work ethic they have engendered—are an important contributing factor to his having become one of college and amateur golf’s best players.
“Farmers work hard,” Mouw’s father, the Billy in Billy’s Egg Farm in Chino, Calif., said. “My wife and I work long hours. All our kids picked up on that. Even last weekend, when William was home for a little bit, he was packing eggs. It is what it is. It’s a family business. They’d gather the eggs, pack the eggs, and sell the eggs in our store. They’d even have to take out the fertilizer with wheelbarrows.”
The store sells 25,000 eggs a day, give or take, according to Mouw’s LinkedIn page. The business, he wrote, “has helped me learn hard-working skills. … I watched my dad work hard and demonstrate to me what it takes to be successful in this world. Waking up early mornings and being grateful for everything you have.”
Mouw, a 22-year-old senior, is eighth in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, but more importantly for his career ambitions, he is fourth in the PGA Tour University Velocity Global rankings. The top senior after this year's NCAA Championship earns a PGA Tour card through the rest of the year, while those finishing second through fifth receive a Korn Ferry Tour card through the end of the season.
“The PGA Tour University is great,” Mouw said last week. “It just allows college golfers to work for something, to have a job coming out of college, whatever tour you fall on. There’s something else on the line. You’re working for your team and your future, your job.”
The quest to finish in the top five of the PGA Tour U. likely amplifies the pressure on those in contention, with professional playing opportunities hanging in the balance. Yet neither Mouw nor his college coach Michael Beard seemed concerned that it might have a deleterious effect on his bid to finish among the top five.
“It’s been the same for me,” Mouw said. “I just keep working hard and doing my thing with my coaches. Let your golf do the talking and trust the process.”
Beard, the son of former PGA Tour standout Frank Beard, expects Mouw will move up in the rankings. “He sees himself at a certain level, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get there,” Beard said. “He’s right on pace where I see him at, and I think where he sees himself at. I think he’ll improve that number as we get further on in the spring. I don’t see him backing down one bit.
“When I first recruited William, the feeling I got was that he’s trying to win on every shot. He doesn’t play with fear. He never seems to have anything to bog down his mind, to interfere with the ultimate goal, to hit it as close as he can, or making a putt or shooting a low score. He just has an ability to almost hyper-focus on the target. It’s really, really cool. That’s why I think he’s going to be a name and a player we’re going to see for a long time.”
Mouw learned to play on public courses in the area near the family home and business in Chino, 35 miles east of Los Angeles. His only instructor has been his father, who admits to having played golf for 45 years but only reluctantly acknowledges that he is “pretty good.” A check of Billy’s handicap index on the USGA’s Golf Handicap Index Network shows that he currently plays to a plus-2.2 index and has had an index as low as plus-3.6.
“God has blessed William with a lot of athletic ability,” Billy said, while also noting his son’s competitiveness. “If he’s going to gather eggs, he’s going to be the fastest egg gatherer. If he’s going to pack eggs, he’s looking at everybody else and thinking ‘I’m going to go faster than you.’ He’s such a competitive kid.”
Mouw already has played in a U.S. Open, in 2022 at The Country Club at Brookline, though he missed the cut. He played on Pepperdine’s national championship team in 2021, and though he has only one career victory in college, he has played consistently well, earning first-team All-American honors as a freshman and honorable mention All-American honors in his sophomore and junior years. He has a 70.47 scoring average so far in seven events during his final year in Malibu.
Moreover, he was a member of the winning U.S. Walker Cup team in 2021, won the Trans-Mississippi Championship in 2022, played in five U.S. Amateurs, and in 2017 was a member of the U.S. Junior Presidents Cup team, of which Jack Nicklaus, his favorite golfer, was the honorary captain.
“I really liked how he played, how competitive he was, his style of game,” Mouw said. “I liked his composure. I love how he hit a fade, something I’ve done my whole life. It was a pretty unreal experience to see him out cheering us on on singles day [at the Junior Presidents Cup].”
As for role models, Mouw finds them at home, his mother Michelle and father Billy hard at work, at Billy’s Egg Farm. Together they bequeathed Mouw with a work ethic that doesn’t guarantee success, but increases its likelihood.
And though the future holds no promises, this much is certain: Given his skill in one endeavor and experience in another, Mouw is more likely to break par than he is an egg.