Billy Andrade is a well-known professional golfer and winner on the PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Champions, who has brought honor both to the game and to the Atlanta community for more than three decades.
Born in Bristol, Rhode Island, Andrade attended Providence Country Day School, where he found success early as a junior golfer. He would not only compete in, but win several national junior events, including the Junior PGA Championship in 1981. Andrade won back-to-back titles at the National Insurance Youth Classic Championship (1980-81). Also in 1981, he was the top-ranked junior golfer according to Golf Digest.
Andrade moved to Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1982 to begin what would become a distinguished collegiate career at Wake Forest University as an Arnold Palmer Scholarship recipient. As a Demon Deacon, Andrade helped lead his team to the 1986 NCAA National Championship, while earning an All-Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) selection four times, third-team All-America honors in 1984, and honorable mention All-America status in 1985 and 1986.
During college, Andrade won national amateur events, including the Sunnehanna Amateur (1986) and the North-South Amateur Championship (1986). He was a member of the 1986 World Amateur Team, 1987 U.S. Walker Cup Team, and in 1983, he won the Rhode Island Amateur Championship and the New England Amateur Championship.
After a successful college golf experience, which included earning a degree in Sociology, and winning many amateur events, Andrade moved to Atlanta and joined the PGA TOUR in 1988. Between 1991 and 2000, he won four times. His first two titles came back-to-back in 1991 at the Kemper Open and the Buick Classic.
He began competing on the PGA TOUR Champions in 2014, where he currently has three victories – Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf, Boeing Classic, Charles Schwab Cup Championship – all in 2015.
Off the golf course, Andrade has been recognized for giving back to his community through charity. As an ambassador for East Lake Golf Club, Andrade, along with Stewart Cink (Georgia Golf Hall of Fame member), hosts the East Lake Invitational. This charity pro-am each year raises funds for the East Lake Foundation and its continued revitalization of the neighborhood in Atlanta.
Andrade also partners with Brad Faxon and manages the Billy Andrade/Brad Faxon Charities for Children, Inc., which supports children’s charities in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
His commitment to charitable giving resulted in him receiving the 2022 Payne Stewart Award. This honor is presented annually by the PGA TOUR to a professional golfer who best exemplifies Stewart’s values of character, charity, and sportsmanship. Andrade was the 25th recipient of this award.
For these contributions to golf and to his community that spans over 35 years, Andrade was inducted into the Providence Country Day School Athletics Hall of Fame (1995), the Rhode Island Golf Hall of Fame (2001), named to the ACC’s 50th Anniversary Team (2002), and inducted into the Wake Forest University Sports Hall of Fame (2004).