Brian Harman of Sea Island, Georgia, won the 151st edition of the British Open Golf Championship last weekend at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club’s Hoylake Course in England. Harman ran away with the tournament, winning by six strokes over an international foursome of Spaniard Jon Rahm, Sepp Straka of Austria, Australian Jason Day, and Tom Kim of South Korea. Harman maintained and then built upon his 36- and 54-hole leads. He was able to gut it out with a precision performance Sunday in the pouring rain on a miserable English Sunday.
Local favorite Tommy Fleetwood rushed up the leader board after round one Thursday with a 5-under-par 66. He shared the top spot with Argentine Emiliano Grillo and amateur Christian Lamprecht. Lambrecht was a most interesting day one leader as he is a 6-foot-8 college golfer at Georgia Tech who is the reigning British Amateur champ. A total of 31 golfers in the field broke par Thursday with Brian Harman just one shot off the pace.
Friday’s second round was very similar to day one with lots of sun and very little wind. Harman eclipsed the field with a 65 and his 10-under-par two-day total gave him at gaudy five-stroke lead over Fleetwood. The leader board included such world class talent as Sepp Straka, who was in third place while Jason Day was fourth. Jordan Spieth, Cam Young, Rory McIlory, Wyndham Clark and Max Homa were within the top 10. A total of 76 golfers made the cut, 24 of them were under par, and the final field represented 24 countries. Among those missing the cut were past Open titlists Phil Mickelson, Collin Morikawa and Shane Lowry alongside Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Tony Finau and Keegan Bradley. You can’t win a tournament Friday evening, especially a major, but after 36 holes it would be Harman’s to lose.
Saturday was more of the same. The weather continued to be pleasant, some golfers made big moves up the leader board, and yet Brian Harman’s closest pursuers faltered. Jon Rahm shot a dynamic 63 while Viktor Hovland and Cam Young recorded a pair of 66s. Harman didn’t lose ground as he carded a 2-under-par 69 and ended the day at 12-under-par, five strokes clear of Young and six clear of Rahm. No golfer in the 151-year history of the Open Championship had ever carried a five-stroke lead into the final round and lost, but this was definitely unchartered territory for Harman, who had exactly two PGA Tour events to his credit during the course of a 12-year career. He wasn’t exactly a journeyman, but he definitely wasn’t a household name.
Sunday dawned and the three days of nice weather were a thing of the past. It was a typical English summer day on the coast with constant and steady rain. Maybe it could have affected Harman, but the toughness of the day would make it difficult for his closest pursuers to close the gap. There would be next to zero chance of someone shooting a 63 in that pouring rain.
Harman started out with some early bogeys, just as he had Saturday, but he was able to right the ship by the middle of his round. He seldom got in trouble off the tee and he was rock-solid with the putter. By the end of the Open, Harman would rank No. 1 in hitting fairways off the tee and No. 1 in strokes gained putting. It was an obvious formula for success and was eerily similar to what Tiger Woods produced when he won at Hoylake in 2005. Harman’s day was all about accuracy and a silky smooth putting stroke. His 1-under-par 70 would push him to 13-under-par and he would end up winning by six strokes. Harman would end up shooting 67-65-69-70 for an aggregate score of 271. He became the 15th American to win the Open during the course of the last 20 years. His caddie is well-known looper Scott Tway.
While fans of the game know who Brian Harman is, he wasn’t exactly anyone’s first-round pick in the office fantasy draft. He was another one of those “can’t miss kids” although his amateur career didn’t exactly lead to professional dominance. A Georgia native, the 36-year-old Harman played his collegiate golf at the University of Georgia where he was a three-time all-American. Prior to that he was the 2008 United States Junior champion, was a two-time American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) player of the year, and a two-time member of the Walker Cup team for Team USA. He also won the prestigious Porter Cup, one of the majors of amateur golf.
After turning professional in 2009, Harman bounced around on the mini-tours for a couple of years, winning in 2010 on the eGolf Professional Tour. He graduated from PGA Q School in the autumn of 2011 and joined the PGA Tour full time in 2012. Two years later he had his breakthrough moment, winning the John Deere Classic in the Quad Cities. The Deere win got him into his first British Open at Royal Liverpool the following week. Harman won the Wells Fargo Championship in 2017 but had remained winless since then. He had his fair share of close calls, most notably at the 2017 United States Open at Erin Hills outside Milwaukee. Harman held the 54 hole-lead, but Brooks Koepka ran down the entire field that Sunday and Harman ended up in second place, four shots shy of first.
Brian Harman plays golf left-handed and now joins Bob Charles of New Zealand and Phil Mickelson as the only lefties to lift the Claret Jug. He does everything else right-handed, which is the opposite of great golfers such as Ben Hogan, Johnny Miller and Jordan Spieth, all of whom play the game right-handed but do everything else left-handed. In the past he has been quoted as saying that “my pro career has been really good at times and not so good at times.”
What is ahead for Brian Harman is anyone’s guess. Like Wyndham Clark’s triumph at last month’s United States Open, his major win was definitely unexpected but certainly not improbable. He is currently ranked 10th in the world. Both Clark and Harman can expect a place on America’s Ryder Cup team, which will be contested in Italy this coming September. With golfers such as Harman and Clark prevailing in golf’s majors this year, that means there is less room on Team USA for Ryder Cup stalwarts such as Justin Thomas and Tony Finau.
Although the PGA Tour still has two more weeks at Minneapolis and Greensboro followed by three weeks of the Fed Ex Cup playoffs, the grand slam season is complete for 2023. Obviously the 2024 Masters will be contested once again at Augusta National while the PGA Championship will be held at Valhalla in Louisville, the U.S. Open returns to Pinehurst in North Carolina’s Hill Country, and the British Open moves up the coast to Royal Troon in Scotland.
