Brian Harman talks like a man who has come to know his previous. That’s why he can let you know concerning the man who signed all these autographs.
That was him at Whatever Tournament in Whatever Town in two-thousand-whatever. The specifics don’t matter as a result of it was all the time the identical. He’d end the spherical, cease by the scoring tent after which head to the clubhouse. That’s the place, inevitably, followers leaning over a rope awaited, dangling hats or pin flags or who-knows-what. Their faces strained, pleading for him — or anybody, actually, who was taking part in in that PGA Tour occasion — to come back over and signal. Of course, Harman would do the appropriate factor. He’d wander over, pull the cap off a Sharpie and oblige. Maybe he’d nod. “You’re welcome.” Maybe he’d even push again the corners of his mouth into one thing resembling a smile.
But inside? Oh, that warmth. The unhealthy sort. A lid rattling atop the pot. “Internally, I’d be like, why do you want my autograph? I’m a middling tour player. I haven’t done anything. I’m not contending. I’m not one of the guys.”
All these years. All these autographs. Every time, he swirled a “B” into an “R” and scribbled no matter else he might muster. It was a reminder that the identify on the paper didn’t dwell as much as what it was alleged to.
He retains speaking …
“If I’m being honest, I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed by my career.”
Harman is on the level the place he can say the onerous half out loud as a result of he’s solely 9 weeks faraway from a second of self-actualization that few ever come to. He’s nonetheless working to course of all of it. At age 36, after profitable two PGA Tour occasions in 343 appearances over a 14-year skilled profession, he received the 2023 Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.
The numbers do not lie… @HarmanBrian is able to make an influence in Rome! pic.twitter.com/25VBgdV3Vs
— Ryder Cup USA (@RyderCupUSA) September 23, 2023
It occurred that quick. Harman missed the minimize at this 12 months’s Masters. He missed the minimize on the PGA Championship. He tied for forty third place on the U.S. Open. Another 12 months on a résumé everybody way back stopped studying. He was what he’s all the time been — a very strong PGA Tour participant with many tens of millions of {dollars} in profession earnings and 0 notoriety. He went to Royal Liverpool ranked a respectful, albeit extremely ignored, No. 26 on the planet rankings. He hadn’t received a match for the reason that 2017 Wells Fargo Championship.
But then all of it got here collectively over 4 days. A brazen, rip-snorting efficiency. A six-shot victory. A brand new world.
Now Harman is readying to journey to Rome for his first Ryder Cup look. It’s a weird, sudden twist on a profession that was in any other case approaching its vanishing level. Harman might have very nicely performed out these later years of his profession in relative anonymity and retired to his 1,000-acre farm in rural Georgia. Instead, he’s each the oldest participant on the 12-man United States group and considered one of 4 rookies. He’s sufficiently old that his first profession PGA Tour win on the 2014 John Deere Classic came to visit runner-up Zach Johnson, who would be the United States captain this week.
It isn’t simple to know a new actuality. But he’s attempting.
“We’ve all got our own journeys and different reasons for being in different places at different times,” Harman says, searching for the appropriate phrases, glancing round a transformed barn close to his household’s residence in St. Simons Island, Ga., throughout a current interview. “It’s not always apparent. But right now, I feel like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
In what seems like a lifetime in the past, Harman was a former No. 1-ranked novice golfer on the planet and All-American at Georgia, considered one of faculty golf’s nice powerhouses. He starred on the profitable 2005 and 2009 Walker Cup groups and a 2007 Palmer Cup group, taking part in with guys like Anthony Kim, Dustin Johnson and Rickie Fowler. Still, Harman was, at varied levels of his junior profession, the can’t-miss, no-doubt, next-big-thing. He walked throughout the driving vary like a chilly cross-wind. Everyone glanced over.
That feeling is one thing Harman chased for a lot of his 20s. The feeling of figuring out he not solely belongs, however that others are attempting to catch him. As a modestly profitable PGA Tour profession performed out, the shadow solid by his teenage self unfold lengthy and by no means missed a step. He was alleged to win, not simply play.
“I used to wax poetic about, ‘oh, I was sooo good when I was a junior golfer,’” Harman says. “But eventually you come to the realization of, well, you’re not 16 anymore.”
The sport, because it does, raced previous. After turning professional in 2009, Harman noticed gamers he grew up beating abruptly hoisting trophies at PGA Tour occasions. In time, new guys — youthful, stronger, longer — confirmed up and began profitable. There was no solution to sustain, no solution to cease what was coming. He was attempting to gradual the rising seas with sandbags. He had a status for being “gritty” and “a bulldog.” All kindly parlance for a smaller man who fights like hell, however comes up quick.
Today, considering again, Harman admits to issues nobody needs to confess. The ugly stuff.
“The way that I felt watching some of my friends win — I hate the way that it made me feel,” he says. “I’m not proud of it. I feel guilty about it to this day.”
The drawback with jealousy is it compounds. For Harman, as years handed, sediment constructed and settled, and constructed and settled. Even when Harris English, considered one of his closest pals, discovered success, Harman struggled to not see it as a reflection of his personal shortcomings.
It festered in him. Worse, it distracted him.
“That jealousy will eat you to pieces,” he now says.
Harman married his spouse, Kelly, in 2014. Then got here three youngsters. The view regularly modified. From his late 20s, to his early 30s, to his mid-30s — he got here to the belief that the expectations heaped upon him as a teenager manifested in him as an grownup.
Then got here one other realization.
“I can’t believe I’ve been such an asshole,” Harman says. “So selfish. There’s plenty of success out there for everyone who works for it. Winning and being successful is a product of someone’s inner strife and hard work and dedication — all the things that I love about people.”
Harman got here to know all of this lately. Seeing Kevin Kisner win the 2021 Wyndham Championship hit him as a second of pleasure. He realized what he’d been lacking out on.
It takes one thing to confess all this out loud. Harman is much from the one participant on tour to emphasize eat the last word query: Why not me? Golf inherently juxtaposes one’s self-worth versus that of his or her pals.
The Open Championship win gave Brian Harman sufficient factors to routinely qualify for the Ryder Cup. (Warren Little / Getty Images)
It wasn’t till profitable the Open two months in the past that Harman actually got here to know the load he’d been carrying for all these years. The win wasn’t a aid. It was a launch. He felt days and weeks and years of battle and doubt and ache rise off his shoulders, swept down the English shoreline. Jeremy Elliott, Harman’s agent and longtime pal, says he noticed Harman depart Hoylake with “profound self-awareness.”
When he returned to motion weeks later on the St. Jude Championship, Harman rolled a few putts on the observe inexperienced when a fellow participant walked by to move alongside congratulations.
“You know, I don’t feel any different,” Harman replied.
“Yeah,” the passerby stated. “Well, you look different.”
He does, and it’s gotten him right here. Harman did Zach Johnson (considered one of his closest pals on tour) a favor by qualifying for the U.S. group as a top-six factors qualifier. He’s the oldest U.S. Ryder Cup rookie since 41-year-old Steve Stricker in 2008 and shall be in a group room this week with a troop of younger gamers he way back watched breakthrough and needed to swallow his envy. When somebody like Justin Thomas walked onto the tour years again, profitable tournaments and capturing an early main, Harman wasn’t precisely keen to construct a bond. “Fact is, I would have absolutely killed to have a career like JT’s,” he says. But the continuing Ryder Cup expertise has introduced with it some perspective. Harman and Thomas have grown shut not too long ago and are abruptly exchanging textual content messages usually. Recently, Harman despatched one observe apologizing to Thomas “for taking so long” to come back round to him. Harman has gotten to know Max Homa and Collin Morikawa, each of whom couldn’t presumably be extra totally different. Last week, Homa sat aghast listening to a story of Harman’s catching an alligator by hand.
“I missed out on interacting with these guys,” Harman says, “and that’s on me.”
For a man later in his profession, Harman positive is studying a lot. He says “clarity has come by necessity.” All it took was 9 weeks, one large, cosmic shift, and now he’s one of many guys.
This time he’s requested, point-blank: Is this validation?
Harman pushes his shoulder up into a half-shrug. “I hate to say that now I belong.”
Spoken like a man who labored to get the place he is.
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton. Photos: Tracy Wilcox / PGA Tour, Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
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