Brian Harman knew Saturday night that sleep would be difficult to come by, even though he knew he needed it. He’d been in that situation six years ago — the 54-hole leader at a major tournament — and knew the nagging costs of a restless night: a second-place finish, months and then years of what-ifs, a career not on the fringe but not in the ultra-elite.
He slept quite well this time. Harman, who has been at the top of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club rankings since Friday, made a methodical march on Sunday to win the British Open by six strokes and finish 13-under par. In a final round marked more by hard work than star-turn splashes, Harman held off a group of challengers whose tournament scores ended up sitting close, rather than close.
It was the widest winning margin in a major men’s golf tournament since Bryson DeChambeau’s six-stroke win at the 2020 US Open.
“I always believed I could do something like this,” Harman said. “It’s easy, when it’s taking this long, it’s hard not to shake my mind, like maybe I won’t win again.”
“I’m 36 years old,” he added. “The game is getting younger. All these youngsters did their best and are all ready to win. When is my turn again? It was difficult to deal with.”
Sunday put an end to those doubts.
When Sunday’s first pairing took place, Harman held a five-stroke lead, a comfortable lead but not insurmountable, especially in a tournament where Paul Lawrie overcame a ten-stroke deficit in the final round in 1999 to win at Carnoustie, Scotland. That story aside, the biggest mystery for most of Sunday at the decidedly wet Royal Liverpool seemed not to be whether Harman would win, but by how much.
Unlike Carnoustie, Royal Liverpool, which is hosting the British Open for the 13th time, has long been friendly to the men who rose early in the rankings. With his win, Harman became the seventh player to win an Open on the course after leading after two rounds.
“He won by six, so there’s nothing that really any one of us could have done,” said Jon Rahm, one of four players to finish second.
Harman, who played college in Georgia and turned pro in 2009, was a consistently talented player on the PGA Tour, making top 10 finishes before the Open 50. But despite Harman posting nearly $29 million in career earnings at Royal Liverpool on Sunday, where his performance netted him $3 million, Harman was rarely seen headlining.
He had two career wins, the John Deere Classic in 2014 and the Wells Fargo Championship in 2017. The following month, he finished second at the US Open in Erin Hills, Wisconsin with his best performance to date at a major, where he lost by four shots to Brooks Koepka. Ranked 26th in the world (and never higher than 20th) before his win at Royal Liverpool, he said he doesn’t think he’s underrated.
When asked over the weekend what he thought his biggest accomplishment in the sport was before Sunday, he sat back in his seat, folded his arms and looked away, a subdued Tour veteran-turned-Open contender contemplating the professional golf version of an everyday resume.
“This year will be the twelfth year in a row that I’ve made the FedEx Cup playoffs,” he replied after about five seconds.
His record at this year’s majors has been extremely mixed, although he has now climbed to 10th in the rankings. He missed the cut at the Masters tournament and the PGA Championship and finished 43rd at the US Open. Then came Royal Liverpool, where he played his first British Open in 2014. Back then, Rory McIlroy won and Harman finished 26th.
He missed the cut in his next four opens. He tied for twelfth place at the Scottish Open in that game, before returning to the golf course in north-west England that had also found champions in the likes of Bobby Jones, Peter Thomson and Tiger Woods.
Harman’s odyssey through this Open began Thursday when his 67 put him in fourth place. On Friday he birdied the first four holes and made an eagle on the last hole for a 65 that gave him the sole lead in the standings. After two early bogeys, his 69 on Saturday put him five strokes clear of Cameron Young and six strokes clear of Rahm, whose Saturday round was the best of any Open at the Royal Liverpool.
The course was fraught with danger. Countless bunkers which, as 2022 Open champion Cameron Smith said, were effectively one-shot penalties. A redesigned par 3 17th hole that punished a US Open winner so badly that he suggested it be redesigned again. Sunday brought the bitterest helping of British Open weather: gusty winds and torrential rain, the court felt like a sauna and a shower at the same time.
But a five-shot lead at sunrise helps despite the sun’s visibility.
“He’s a very tough, experienced character,” said Padraig Harrington, a two-time Open winner, before Harman’s final round began. “Sometimes we see someone refereeing a tournament and you’re like, ‘Oh, is he going to last?’ I don’t think that’s the case with Brian Harman. Almost every day when he hits the golf course, he’s playing with a chip on his shoulder like he’s fighting something. I think that’s ideal for him.”
The raindrops were still falling when Harman stepped for the tee. With his back to the nearby red wine pitcher, he trained himself, taking one look at the other down the fairway and letting go of his left-handed swing. He would reach par on the hole and avoid repeating Saturday’s bogey. But he narrowly missed a par putt in 2nd place, where even a policeman had turned away from the crowd to watch, narrowing his lead. Young failed to convert a 14-foot birdie putt that would have shortened him by another shot.
However, McIlroy had a seven-group lead on the advance. He had started the day at three o’clock. After five holes, he was under by six and suddenly finished second. Rahm made pars and Young, along with Harman, had already made the first bogey. When Harman’s ball rolled down the third green, five players – McIlroy, Rahm, Young, Tommy Fleetwood and Sepp Straka – were in second place. But Harman’s lead stayed the same as it had been at the start.
Other potential competitors were nowhere near, not after the cut had eroded much of its future star power from the leaderboard. Most of those left behind posed no serious threat. Scottie Scheffler, the world’s best player, finished the Open on even par. Wyndham Clark, the winner of last month’s US Open, left Hoylake by an over, as did Smith. Koepka, who won that year’s PGA championship and finished second at the Masters, had eight overs.
On the fifth hole, a par 5 that had been the easiest test of the week, Harman’s drive shot 249 yards and crashed into brush, putting him just over halfway to the pin.
It was on this pin that Rahm, the reigning Masters champion, made progress and hit his ball for his first Sunday birdie. When Harman hit the green, a 12-foot attempt to make par failed, and when the fifth hole for the tournament ended, Harman’s lead dwindled to three shots.
The tension didn’t exactly last.
He topped it again on the par 3 sixth where he landed a birdie putt from about 14 feet and then again on the #7 where he made a birdie putt from 24 feet.
Stability returned until Harman bogeyed the par 3 13th, popular with members of Royal Liverpool. But the players closest to Harman were fast approaching the 18th green and were running out of time. McIlroy, who was aiming for his first major tournament win since 2014, missed a birdie putt there and finished six under. Tom Kim soon left the last green and was still stuck at seven under, as would Rahm, Straka and Jason Day.
Elsewhere in the course, Harman himself was in the process of turning the probable into the inevitable. He birdied on the 14th hole with a putt that raced into the cup about 40 feet downhill. Another birdie followed in 15th place, increasing his lead to six shots.
The rain kept coming. Harman continued his march. A parade of defeated players marched to the clubhouse. The engraver of the wine jug prepared himself.
Soon it would be time to add Harman’s name.