TROON, SCOTLAND | In the last days of his reign as 2023 Open champion, Brian Harman travelled from the east coast of Scotland where he had tied for 21st in the Genesis Scottish Open to the country’s west coast, to Royal Troon for this week’s Open Championship. The good news is that he did so without misadventure and so did the handsome silver Claret Jug that Harman had won at the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool last year.
This is important because Harman, 37, had one last duty to perform with the distinctive trophy. He had to give it back. And this being Britain, where a simple manoeuvre of historical importance can be accorded a 21-gun salute, a marching band and a fly-past by a squadron of aeroplanes from the Royal Air Force, it was no ordinary handover.
The golf event that ends with the words “… the champion golfer of 2003 is …” begins with the filming of the Open champion arriving at the venue, getting out of his car with the trophy and handing it back to Martin Slumbers, chief executive of the R&A and secretary of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. So it was on a grey day at Troon on Monday afternoon. The two men were photographed, both with broad smiles on their faces and each with one hand on the trophy. There is no starting pistol to mark the start of the Open Championship as there might be if it were an athletics event. Instead, this simple ritual does the job.
Harman played his part as well as any of his predecessors had.
“I practiced getting out of the car and handing over the trophy one time,” he said with a smile. “I don’t know whether I am any good at it. I’ll have to go back and watch the tape and see how I did.
“It’s been a great year. Yeah, a little sad to give it back, but I’ll remember everywhere it’s been forever. I drank some unusually expensive wine and some unusually exceptional bourbon out of it. In my opinion, it’s the coolest trophy in all of sports. So, I think it’s deserving of all of the pageantry that is involved with it.”
There, in those few words, you got the essential Harman: unfussy, neither garrulous nor taciturn, matter of fact, friendly. It is how he is, and it is how he plays golf. He is not showy. He does not have a power game that demands one looks at it and marvel. He is as true to himself in his dress and demeanour off the golf course as he is neat and tidy with his play on a golf course. There is little or no artifice about Harman or his personality.
Harman, ranked 13th in the world, was asked if there was any part of him that had felt the need to act differently because he was Open champion and because of what he had achieved by winning the game’s oldest professional major championship. He frowned and looked slightly affronted at the question. Why would I think that? he seemed to be thinking. “I’m just not sure that I would be capable of acting any differently if I wanted to,” he said. “I just try and be really honest. I try and be myself. That way I don’t ever have to pretend to be something I’m not. That’s just kind of the way I’ve always done it.”
In an era when prize money increases annually – this year’s Open purse was raised by $500,000, to $17 million – Harman made a surprise admission. He would play in this event for no prize money.
When someone played as well as Harman did to win by six strokes at Royal Liverpool last year, he has every right to feel content and to carry on the way he always has done. The weather may have been predominantly dreary and often wet, but his golf lit up this course near Liverpool. There were 82 bunkers there, and Harman was in only three of them in his 72 holes. Matthew Fitzpatrick, the 2022 U.S. Open champion, was in two on one hole. Harman’s putting was impeccable. He missed only one out of 60 putts from within 10 feet. This performance helped propel him, a debutant, into the U.S. Ryder Cup team in Rome last September where he won two points out of four.
It is ironic that his putting, so good for most of last year, has been a relative weakness this year.
“My stats this year have been really good,” said the left-handed American. “My ball-striking has been as good as it’s ever been. The only thing I haven’t done well this year is I haven’t putted especially well. So, I’m just kind of waiting for it all to line up correctly.
“You can work and work and work. You just never know when that work is going to pay off. So, you just have to hope it’s a big week. I’ve worked really hard, and my game is in really good shape. I’m happy with what I’m doing going into this week.”
In an era when prize money increases annually – this year’s Open purse was raised by $500,000, to $17 million – Harman made a surprise admission. He would play in this event for no prize money.
“I am not sure everybody would, but I would,” he said. “I play golf for me … to see how good I can get. I play golf because I enjoy torturing myself with things that are really hard to do. Most times when I get done with a tournament, I couldn’t tell you … how much that I made that week.”
Amidst all the celebrations that followed his victory 12 months ago, Harman took time to realise the extent of it. In fact, it hit home only months later when he was driving his tractor on his 60-acre farm in Georgia and he recounted it in a very Harmanesque, low-key way.
“I was at my farm, and it’s wintertime, and I’m riding my four-wheeler. I just kind of like had a moment where it’s just me. It’s cold, and it was just like I was so happy that I was there. It’s nice to be the Open champion and still be doing the same thing that I would have been doing otherwise.”
Harman is competing in his ninth Open, so he knows his way around links courses. The secret?
“You’ve got to control the trajectory on your golf ball,” he said. “That’s the rub of the Open Championship and links golf in general. That’s what makes this my favourite major to play in because that’s still a skill that I think is very important and sometimes gets lost in some other places. I think that … probably one of the most important things when you’re playing links golf … is being able to hit a piercing golf shot that stays underneath the wind. Being able to work the ball against the wind, whichever way it’s blowing. A lot of times, if you let a ball kind of go with the wind, it has trouble stopping going that way.”
With that, he set off for the practice ground in that businesslike walk of his. The odds are that he won’t be cuddling the Claret Jug again on Sunday evening as he had on the Sunday of last year’s Open. But Harman is determined to give as good of an account of himself as the reigning champion as he possibly can. That is entirely within his character: determined, thoughtful and unspectacular.