2023 British Open: Unwavering, unbeatable, Brian Harman meets the moment at The Open
HOYLAKE, England – Sleeping on the lead for two nights didn’t derail him.
Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy and Cameron Young couldn’t shake him.
A miserable English summer day that forced him to go through four towels and 15 gloves wouldn’t bother him.
And so some of the fans here at Royal Liverpool took it upon themselves to try to unnerve Brian Harman – not out of spite, of course, but because of boredom. He’d snuffed the drama out of the 151st Open by happy-hour Friday. Soaked and increasingly sour, they rooted for his tee shots to die in the pot bunkers. They cheered for his putts that grazed the edges. They heckled his endless pre-shot routine of a dozen waggles and shuffles and re-grips.
The only problem?
With each quip and insult and jeer, they weren’t rattling him – they were fueling him.
“If they wanted me to not play well,” Harman said with a smile, “they should have been really nice to me.”
Too late now, because on the ancient links that has exalted some of the giants of the sport, it was the diminutive left-hander – generously listed at 5 feet, 7 inches – who towered over the rest of field. After securing his six-shot victory in one of the most dominant major performances in recent memory, Harman became a man among boys, accepting congratulations from his 6-foot-3 caddie, Scott Tway; posing for photographs beside monstrous low amateur Christo Lamprecht, who stands 6-foot-8; and getting a flurry of messages back home from his best friend, 6-foot-5 Patton Kizzire.
“It’s like a natural selection-type thing,” Harman joked. “The law of averages, I suppose.”
But the funny thing about Harman is that he’s never been merely average or ordinary. As he scanned the claret jug in his winner’s press conference, he spoke of a journey validated not because of how he’d played recently – but for what he’d done his entire career.
When Georgia coach Chris Haack first recruited Harman, the Southern southpaw played a tight draw on almost every shot. He peppered fairways and greens, boatraced fields and soared up the prep rankings. While in high school he joined Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson as one of only four players to twice win the AJGA Player of the Year award. He captured the U.S. Junior in 2003, made a PGA Tour cut a year later, and then, at 18, became the youngest U.S. Walker Cupper in history. When he signed with the Bulldogs in 2004, he was the country’s top recruit.
“There just wasn’t anybody that could beat me then,” Harman said.
“He’s one of the few that as a junior player he could have maybe turned pro,” said J.T. Poston, one of Harman’s closest friends on Tour. “He was that sharp and that developed.”
Brimming with a confidence bordering on cockiness, Harman won his first college start. His potential seemed limitless – no fairway was too narrow, no flag too hidden, no putt too scary, no moment too big.
“Just wide-open freedom,” he said. “It’s an awfully fun way to play, with no inhibitions.”
When Georgia played its annual event in Puerto Rico, Harman and his teammates always strolled into the hotel casino to play blackjack. It was a fascinating social experiment for Haack and assistant Jim Douglas – studying guys like Harman who wanted to bet aggressively, trying to run streaks and triple up, versus those who were conservative, taking a few hands and then pulling back to win in small increments.
“You could tell they’re not afraid, that they’re not afraid to lose,” Haack said. “They wanted to win a lot more than they hated to lose. Some guys, they’d lose a hand and it’s the end of the world. Losing doesn’t bother them. They’re chasing glory.”
The highlight of Harman’s college career, at least individually, was at the 2009 NCAA Championship, when his Bulldogs faced off against Oklahoma State in a Nos. 1-vs.-2 match-play showdown. In the anchor match Harman was pitted against Rickie Fowler, the floppy-haired darling of amateur golf. On the 15th hole, Harman rolled in a clutch 8-footer to remain 1 down, but by the time he picked his ball out of the cup, Fowler and his coach had already left for the next tee, leaving Harman to retrieve the flag on the opposite side of the green.
Harman seethed. “I’m about to light this guy up,” he told Haack.
Full-field scores from the 151st Open Championship
Sure enough, Harman ripped off three birdies in a row to flip the deficit and close out the match, leaving Fowler in tears in the locker room.
“He’s always had a chip on his shoulder – I think that’s what makes him good,” said Brendon Todd, who played with Harman for three years with the Bulldogs. “He’s like, I don’t care how I’m doing it, but I’m going to beat you.”
But over the years, Harman found himself chasing his former self. Despite all the hype he won just twice and never finished as a first-team All-American. He grew up, got distracted, enjoyed college. He tried adding a fade and never enjoyed quite the same ball-striking excellence. There was also the competitive aspect of playing big-time college golf: Gone was the freedom of his youth, replaced with high-pressure tournaments featuring harder courses, tighter fairways, firmer greens, more anxiety.
“I’ve spent the majority of my professional career trying to rekindle some of that,” he said.
After graduating in 2009, Harman twice bombed out of Q-School’s first stage, leaving the one-time prodigy to slum it on the mini-tours for two years. When he finally landed on Tour, in 2011, he never looked back. But the game that once came so easily was already changing in ways that disadvantaged a scrappy player whose average length was best suited to just a handful of Tour tracks.
For 11 straight years Harman has kept his card – only eight players have accomplished that feat – but he reached the Tour Championship just twice, his average FedExCup rank of 50th providing a fruitful life (nearly $30 million in earnings) without the attendant stresses of stardom. His lone Tour victories came against a weak field in the 2015 John Deere Classic and then again in 2017 at the Wells Fargo Championship. When he finally grabbed his first 54-hole lead in a major, at the 2017 U.S. Open, he sounded more relieved than excited: What took so long?
“I’ve always had self-belief that I could do something like this,” he said. “But when it takes so much time, it’s hard not to let your mind falter, like maybe I’m not winning again.
“I’m 36 years old. The game is getting younger. All these young guys coming out, they hit it a mile, and they’re all ready to win. Like: When is it going to be my turn again? It’s been hard to deal with. There’s a lot of times when you get done, and you’re like, Damnit, man. I had that one. It just didn’t happen for whatever reason.”
Now a seasoned Tour veteran, Harman is dealing with new challenges. His motivation wanes. He has a wife and three kids. The pull of home is real. He has interests outside of golf, much to the amusement of the British press, who had a field day with Harman’s proclivity for hunting and dubbed him the “Butcher of Hoylake,” the quasi-romantic who asked his now-wife, Kelly, to marry him by taping the engagement ring inside the pocket of a new pair of camo pants.
But their queries created the misconception that Harman is just some trigger-happy redneck. In reality, he’s the son of a dentist father and a chemist mother who carried a 3.7 GPA throughout college. He’s sharp and detailed and thorough; for a room full of wide-eyed reporters he broke down, in excruciating detail, his process for stalking, harvesting and packing meat. With a bow and arrow, he kills not for sport but for the serenity. For the strategy. Hunting and golf demand similar patience, pursuits in which he fails far more often than he succeeds.
“It’s always been a good outlet for him,” Haack said.
Deer season begins in less than two months, but in his chosen profession Harman was determined to capitalize on some of the best form of his career, to finally make good on the potential of his youth. A month ago, he discovered that he was cutting across his putts and picked up a training aid on the practice putting green. With his stroke straightened out, Harman ran off three consecutive top-12 finishes and trended toward the year’s final major.
Over the first two rounds here at The Open, Harman rolled in a whopping 264 feet worth of putts to soar to a five-shot lead at the halfway point. No one in the past 40 years had surrendered an advantage that large at that stage, and he sounded uptight and anxious. He wouldn’t reveal his putting secret. He repeated his need for proper rest and nutrition. So much for the freedom of his junior days – on the course now he looked fidgety and restless, his waggle a telltale sign of his growing nerves.
In the third round Harman was paired with Tommy Fleetwood, the local hero trying to become England’s first Open winner in more than 30 years. For four hours he was doubted, drowned out and occasionally abused – jeers that were “unrepeatable,” he said – and after a few early wobbles, as he marched to the next tee, a fan stared him down and barked, “Harman, you don’t have the stones for this!”
Oops.
“That helped,” he smirked.
Triggered by the taunt, Harman steadied himself after the early bogeys and played mistake-free to the clubhouse, leaving Fleetwood in his wake and restoring his five-shot advantage.
Sunday’s final round amid a steady rain was painfully dull, just as Harman had hoped. No one drew closer than three shots. On the diabolical 17th, a few fans tried one last time to get in his head. They mocked his height. They told him to shank it. They laughed maniacally as he stood over the shot, gripping and re-gripping. All Harman did amid the chaos was knock it to 14 feet. He grinned as he returned the club to his bag, another delicious clapback in a career full of them.
“It’s part of that aggressive nature, like, I’ll show you,” Haack said. “He’s not a melting snowflake. He’s gonna take it on: Let’s f–king go.”
Beyond the personal satisfaction of a career week, Harman’s victory has significant ramifications for the U.S. Ryder Cup squad. Like Wyndham Clark before him, Harman is poised to crash the American team room for the first time. With his attitude, his putting prowess, his pedigree – his peers know what to expect.
“He will be phenomenal,” Todd said. “He’s gonna pound somebody.”
“I wouldn’t want to play him,” Poston said.
“He’s ultra, ultra-competitive,” captain Zach Johnson said. “I see an innate ability to eliminate fear.”
But that’s in two months’ time, and Harman was in no mood to look that far ahead. Tonight, there was Guinness to chug out of the claret jug. Tomorrow, he’ll meet up with the rest of his family at a lake house in upstate New York for a few days of fishing. And later next week, when returns home to south Georgia, well, he knows what awaits: a new, 105-horsepower Kubota tractor, ordered a few weeks ago with some of the earnings from his recent hot streak. He’ll tuck away his phone, set out on his 40 acres, and soak in the silence of a job well done.