Brian Harman celebrated a maiden major title as he stormed to a six-shot victory at The 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, excelling around the greens to lift the Claret Jug and claim his first win since 2017.
Monday 24 July 2023 18:16, UK
Brian Harman waggled, and he waggled, and he waggled. Try 12 times. Try 13 times. Behold the Wirral waggler, the Harmanator of Hoylake, the runaway winner of The 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.
With every delicate wedge shot, with every clutch putt there was a calculating and habitual club waggle to precede it. Such became its prevalence, the US broadcast introduced a 'waggle count' to its coverage.
Twice he slept on the pressure of a five-shot lead and twice he emerged at the tee with a refusal to stray from his distinctive and, on this occasion, effective approach; an unwavering waggle to set himself would serve as a telling nod to the manner in which he was handling the nerves. Pretty well, by all accounts.
In a week when a rain-stricken Manchester Ashes Test would coincide with a drizzly Open, Harman weathered the storm to march to a maiden major crown with the fidgety demeanour of Steve Smith at the crease and the doppelganger looks of Ricky Ponting. The metaphorical storm, though, never quite arrived.
The avid hunter, who seemed to warm to a suggested nickname of 'the Butcher of Hoylake', became the hunted, only for few to come even remotely close to threatening him. Jon Rahm lurked after a scintillating round of 63 on the Saturday, Tommy Fleetwood's blistering opening day had ignited short-lived hopes of a local champion, and between them a pool of Cam Young, Jason Day, Sepp Straka, Rory McIlroy and Tom Kim flirted back and forth with contention. But the champion was untouchable.
Harman, who catapulted himself to the top with an opening round 67 and second-round 65, had become just the 13th men's player in 72-hole major history to hold a five-shot lead after 36 holes, the only two to have blown such a cushion being Bobby Clampett at the 1982 Open and Henry Cooper at the 1936 Masters.
With his fast start he also became the first player to lead the Open by five shots after 36 holes since eventual champion Louis Oosthuizen in 2010.
Royal Liverpool awaited a historic capitulation from its underdog, but it never came. Not when he bogeyed the second and fifth, to which he responded with back-to-back birdies. Not when he bogeyed the 13th, to which he responded with back-to-back birdies.
"Better late than never, I've thought about this my entire life," Harman told Sky Sports. "I doubled down on this process, I know it's boring and not flashy but until I hit that last bunker shot I didn't think about winning this tournament.
"It's hard to get way ahead of yourself, couple days in a row where I could have let it get sideways and I didn't.
"I was just taking a shower this morning thinking 'you can't win an Open Championship in the shower, don't think about it, left foot, right foot, let's get it done'."
Growing up, Harman's childhood house was situated on Southbridge golf club in Savannah, Georgia, where he lived with his dentist father and chemist mother, neither of whom carried much of an interest in life on the fairways.
It wasn't until 1997 that Harman became enamoured by the sport in which he would later become a champion, a day at home from school allowing him to watch on as Tiger Woods holed his historic ace at the Phoenix Open to prompt roars that echoed beyond the walls of TPC Scottsdale. A new and burning love for golf would supersede his baseball roots as Harman found a sense of belonging out on the course.
He went on to enjoy a decorated amateur career as he triumphed at the 2003 US Junior Amateur followed by wins at the 2005 Players Amateur and 2007 Porter Cup. Within that spell he also made his PGA Tour debut at the age of 17 at the 2004 MCI Heritage, and had become a three-time 2nd Team All-American by the time he left the University of Georgia.
Harman recorded his first victory as a professional at the Manor Classic in 2010 before featuring at the 2012 Players Championship as a last-gasp alternate to D.A. Points, notably teeing off alone after player partners Carl Pettersson and Robert Garrigus had already gotten underway.
Having qualified for his first ever major at the 2012 US Open, he then won his first PGA Tour event at the 2014 John Deere Classic after edging out Zach Johnson by one stroke.
Unlike his commanding week at Hoylake, pole position hasn't always fared kindly for Harman: in 2015 he relinquished a 54-hole lead at the Travelers Championship to finish third behind winner Bubba Watson, and in 2017 had led by one stroke after 54 holes at the US Open only to finish four adrift of champion Brooks Koepka.
With a gallery heavy on Tommy Fleetwood fans counting on a miscue, Harman flourished to clinch his first victory since the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship, where he edged out Dustin Johnson and Pat Perez by one shot with a decisive 28-foot putt on the final hole.
While bigger hitters clobbered their way down the Hoylake fairways, it was the touch and the finesse of Harman around the greens that put him in control, even if he is eager to receive more recognition for his long game. His twitchy hands and routine waggle emerged as a topic of fascination, fuelled by the winning lefty doing everything else in life with his right hand.
That includes his beloved hunting, for which he noted he uses a bow and arrow.
"You wouldn't be want to be standing in front of me. I'm good out to about 80 yards, but I don't take a shot past 40," he said on Sunday.
"That explains your short game," joked one journalist.
As drab conditions sought to suck the life out of the Open atmosphere, Harman went to work draining any optimism from a thrilling finale. He quashed any prospect of chaos, in the end making light work of closing things out down the stretch.
"Maybe it was one of those things where it was the perfect week, where you didn't need length, you needed precision, he took full advantage of it and he was a fighter," said Sky Sports Golf's Dame Laura Davies.
"He was up against Tommy Fleetwood's gallery on Saturday and he fought them off. They were nice to him, they weren't disrespectful to him, but they wanted Tommy to do well.
"It was his week this week, whether he does it again we'll have to see. He's proven he can do it under pressure against the best field."
Tiger Woods is the only man since 1913 to have clinched an Open title by a bigger shot margin than Harman's.
What he might have lacked in stature at 5'7" or in power off the tee in comparison to his rivals, he more than made up for with his nous in and around the greens, his golfing IQ to navigate the tricky links design and, crucially, a mental resilience to bury any fears of giving up top spot.
Another first-time champion arises.
The PGA Tour season continues with the 3M Open in Minneapolis, beginning on Thursday, while the next DP World Tour event is the ISPS Handa World Invitational - co-sanctioned with the LPGA Tour - in Northern Ireland from August 17-20.
Two women's majors remain on the 2023 calendar, the Evian Championship from Thursday and the AIG Women's Open from August 10-13, while the next men's major will be McIlroy's latest Grand Slam bid at The Masters in April.
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