The 2023 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool wasn't the most riveting of Majors – a combination of the drab weather and sheer brilliance of Brian Harman – but that won't bother the American one jot.
Below, he recalls his momentous victory with David Facey, lifts the lid on his interactions with the UK media and discusses his approach to links golf. Could we see Harman going back-to-back at Royal Troon this year? Stranger things have certainly happened...
We’re closing in on a year since you won The Open. Did it prove life-changing for you?
Life-changing? No. Career-changing? Maybe. At least in the sense of being recognised a bit more often at restaurants and airports, and probably how I’m viewed by my fellow players – and how I see myself, I suppose. I can tell you for sure that life as a Major Champion is better than life before I was a Major winner. First of all you’ve got all the exemptions into the signature events on the PGA Tour sewn up, and the guarantee of playing in all the Majors for the next five years. And in The Open, pretty much for as long as I can stand up and swing a club. It’s a heck of a lot easier mapping out a schedule when those things are taken care of.
How special is it to be an Open Champion?
When I look back on my career, this will obviously be the highlight. Hopefully, I can win more Majors. But even if I do, the first one will always be special. But when I say it wasn’t life-changing, I mean I’m still the same guy, I still do the same things and hang out with the same people, who give me just as much grief as always. If I’d won the Open at 26 it could have set me off on a whole new trajectory. But I won it at 36. I was happily married with three kids, I’d gone through the diaper-changing and bottle-filling phases, and my life was already pretty great. There was a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice in those 36 years, and I guess I was just ready for it.
At Hoylake you talked a lot about your love of links golf. Where did that start?
I fell in love with it the first time I ever set foot on a traditional links course, when I qualified for The Open at Royal Liverpool back in 2014. Liverpool, huh? No wonder I got a good vibe from being there – maybe it was a premonition of what was to come.
But it was just incredible to experience that type of golf. I was the last man in at the 2014 Open, after winning the John Deere the week before. I was straight on the red-eye, and what a difference to the course I’d just won on in Illinois. I thought straight away I can do well on these courses. It’s not just a one- trick thing, like so many of the tournaments are back home – hit it as far and as high as you can, and see what that brings you.
How did you take to the challenge of links golf?
For me, it was all about controlling the ball, about altering your trajectory and about showing discipline, imagination and creativity. It just blew me away.
I finished T26th in my first Open, then missed four cuts in a row! But that didn’t dishearten me. I was learning all the time. I can’t remember which course it was, but there was a time in a practice round and I walked past a fairway bunker that couldn’t have been more than 180 yards from the tee. I remember saying to my caddie: “What the heck is that doing there?” And the next day the wind flipped around 180˚ and it was blowing a gale into our faces. And I thought: “Now I get it!” That was just so cool.
Your love of hunting was another big talking point at Royal Liverpool – you were dubbed the ‘Butcher of Hoylake’ among other things. Did that rankle with you?
You’re kidding me, right? I loved all that back and forth, with the tabloid guys in particular. It was obviously just a culture thing. Hunting seems to be kind of frowned on over here, but back home it’s something a lot of us are pretty much born to. There’s a skill and a thrill to stalking and taking down game, whether it’s deer, elk, turkey, whatever. I spend a lot of time planting food for the animals around my farm back in Georgia, and they’re allowed to roam free. There’s no fences or ditches or stuff like that.
I like to think I’ve got massive respect for wildlife. I had that drummed into me as a kid – you can hunt, but you eat what you kill. I remember I killed a squirrel when I was about eight, and my dad made me skin it, cook it and eat it. The only other time I stepped out of line was when me and some college dudes jumped into a lake once and pulled out a live alligator. I think there might have been some drink involved. That was just wrong, on so many levels. It’s not something any of us ever tried to do again – for obvious reasons.
So you didn’t mind the banter?
At Hoylake, I think once everyone came to realise I wasn’t some big-game trophy hunter, shooting animals to put their heads on the walls around the house, it became a bit of fun between me and the Brits. I made it clear I hunt with a bow, and that I always butcher and eat what I kill. Or share it with friends for them to eat. I think that made a big difference.
That led to me being called the Butcher of Hoylake but I sure wasn’t upset by that. It was just nuts. You know, when I went out to celebrate at a local ribs shack near Hoylake that night, they gave me one of their aprons with Butcher of Hoylake written on it. And I was happy to pose for pictures with that.
When I got home, my wife threw me a Brian the Butcher-themed party. She had that printed on T-shirts and golf balls for everyone, and there was a big old picture of me that people could take selfies with. It was a riot. I mentioned that at the Ryder Cup and the UK writers loved it. I can’t wait to see what they’ve got in store for me this time, but bring it on.
That was mostly tongue-in-cheek but your pre-shot routine – the oft-repeated waggle – attracts criticism. Does that worry you?
Not really, although I am aware that it can be annoying to watch. I get that. But if I tried to change it, I think it could easily throw me off my game. So I’m prepared to take the odd jeer, and the shouts of, “Get on with it, Harman.”
When I first turned pro I was honestly one of the quickest players out here. But that just meant I spent a lot of time standing around waiting forever for other guys to hit their shots. I found that really frustrating. So I made a conscious decision to slow down.
That meant taking a few more practice swings, and tweaking my set-up a bit while I was visualising the shot. And then taking even more practice swings, and a couple more tweaks. And yeah, I’ve definitely slowed down too much. Look, I know it’s not fun to watch, and I don’t like looking at it on the highlights reel either. But I’m not going to hit a shot until I’m good and ready.
Do you appreciate your success more as the big one came fairly late in your career?
Yeah, I think so. Looking back on my career, it hasn’t been as smooth as I hoped. I had a pretty stellar time of it as a junior and an amateur. I won the US Junior and plenty more big events, and then became the youngest guy ever to make the Walker Cup team. But through college, and after I turned pro, things kind of spluttered.
I’d only won twice on the PGA Tour before Hoylake, and I figure with the talent I’ve got, I should have won a bunch more. It’s not just because I don’t carry the ball 310 yards through the air, like some of these giants on tour. Or even some of the smaller guys, like Rory! I finished 2nd on the longest US Open course there’s ever been at Whistling Straits, and Hoylake sure wasn’t a short course.
I’m a medium-length hitter, around 290. But I generally hit it straight, my short game is pretty sharp and I’m a good putter. You could even say a great putter, when I have weeks like Hoylake.
You did putt unbelievably well…
People were throwing facts at me, like I only took 106 putts through the 72 holes that week and that I was 58 out of 59 for putts up to 10ft. The one I really liked was that in the previous 100 years, only two guys had won by a bigger margin than my six-shot victory – Tiger by eight in 2000 and Louis Oosthuizen by seven ten years later. That is a pretty neat stat.
It’s funny, when I saw my fellow Georgia Bulldog, Sepp Straka, after the final round – he was one of the guys who shared 2nd place, remember – he said to me, “Wow, that was Tiger Woods golf you played this week.” I kind of shrugged that off, but maybe he had a point!
l Was there anything different about your mindset that week?
Hoylake happened after I made a conscious decision not to get hung up on results. I was asking myself why I wasn’t getting multiple wins, why I didn’t post more top tens and so on. So I started concentrating on stuff like, “How far can I hit this 6-iron?” And can I do it again? And again? And again? I decided if I could inject real consistency into my game, the results would come.
It all worked out that one week in Liverpool, and hopefully there will be some more great golf when I take the Claret Jug with me to Royal Troon. And maybe I’ll take it home again…
