This was published 11 months ago
‘I get out here and it’s armageddon’: Harman soaks up pressure in rain to win British Open
By Mark Tallentire
Royal Liverpool: Brian Harman is the British Open champion after holding his nerve for the second day in a row during a final round played in driving rain.
The American began the 151st Open Championship as a 90-1 outsider but confounded almost everyone, except himself, on Monday (AEST) to secure just his third tournament win, and a career-defining one.
Brian Harman after his victory at Hoylake.Credit: Getty
Harman, 36, dropped two shots early on to give the pack hope – as first Rory McIlroy, then Jon Rahm and finally Sepp Straka began minor charges – but a birdie at the sixth restored the gap to four and another at the seventh meant he was largely untroubled for the rest of the day. He dropped a shot at the par-three 13th, and Straka reduced the gap to three with a birdie at the 16th, but the American promptly sank a 36-footer at the 14th and followed up with another to walk down the 18th with a six-shot lead.
He hit the 10-under mark on Friday and was five shots clear of the field, a gap that slipped to two at one point in the third round, but the focus and stoicism he showed throughout weekend play, in the face of deteriorating weather, was to his credit as he compiled one of the Open’s great final rounds under enormous pressure. He had led the 2017 US Open by a shot after 54 holes and lost it by four. As the saying goes, you have to lose one to learn how to win one.
“Today I’m looking at the forecast and I’m like, ‘What the hell do they know’, and I get out here and it’s armageddon. It was bad. It was really tough,” Harman, who is from Georgia, said. “I haven’t historically done very good in the rain. It’s just always bugged me. I was really proud of the way that I struck the ball in the rain today. I really, honestly didn’t think about winning until I had the ball on the green on 18.”
He said the negative reaction from some crowd members helped focus his mind.
Rory McIlroy prepares to putt in the rain.Credit: Getty
“After I made the second bogey [on Saturday], a guy, when I was passing him, he said, ‘Harman, you don’t have the stones for this’,” he said. “That helped a lot. It helped snap me back into, ‘I’m good enough to do this. I’m going to do this. I’m going to go through my process, and the next shot is going to be good’. You had [Tommy] Fleetwood and Rory making a run. It’s fine. Everybody has got their team they’re rooting for. If they wanted me to not play well, they should have been really nice to me.
“Yeah, I look forward to coming back for a really long time. I never knew how much I’d appreciate it until the first time I came in 2014. I just didn’t know what to expect. You grow up in Georgia, it’s all the Masters. But I came here and I was like, ‘Wow man, this is unbelievable’. Man, I’m stoked. Stoked to come back here.”
Jason Day was the best of the Australian contingent, with a 69 giving him a seven-under total and a share of second with Straka, Rahm and Tom Kim. It was Day’s best finish in 11 British Opens and confirmation, if it was needed, that after the back and wrist injuries that dropped the former world No.1 to No.175, he can again contend in majors.
Day, the 2015 US PGA champion, started at five under. He dropped two early shots but chipped in from off the green at the ninth to huge cheers from the galleries, and his second successive birdie put him on six under. Another came on the 15th, and he finished with a 30-footer to take second outright.
Jason Day putts on the 14th at Royal Liverpool.Credit: Getty
“Brian had to come back to us [for the pack to catch him], essentially,” Day said. “I wish I would have cut into the lead a little bit more. You just never know. When someone has such a great lead, and then you kind of cut into it, you just never know what they’re going to do under the pump.”
Adam Scott produced one of the shots of the morning, holing from a greenside bunker at the fourth for an eagle two, but his round caught fire only at the end, when he birdied the last two to finish on one over for the tournament.
“I was lucky as I had the first 10 holes kind of dry; then played [most of] the back nine in the rain,” he said. “I did today what I needed to do the other days, but I finished poorly every other round. I just kind of made up the numbers this weekend.”
The same could be said for disappointed 2022 champion Cameron Smith, who was out in worse weather and could muster only a 72 to finish level with Scott.
‘It kind of sucked handing back the trophy, but it was nice to come back and play again.’
Cameron Smith
“It was just wet and the ball wasn’t going very far,” he said. “It was playing really long. I hit a drive on 16 straight over a bunker which I thought I could carry, and we were five or six metres short of it. It kind of sucked handing back the trophy, but it was nice to come back and play again.”
Min Woo Lee came in 20 minutes later. Despite having sat high on the leaderboard alongside Day after 36 holes, his four-over round did him no favours, although he was wiser for the experience.
“All day we pretty much had the umbrella up. I guess I can get in contention the first two rounds and then the weekend was obviously not that good, so it was more just the technical game I’ve got to work on,” he said.
McIlroy’s charge stalled and he finished in sixth with Emiliano Grillo, while Fleetwood was the last player in the field to have a disaster at the treacherous 17th, a triple-bogey six, but he responded with a birdie at the last to make it into the top 10 and confirm his Open place for next year.
Matthew Jordan, the Hoylake member who made it into the field in local qualifying and got the tournament under way on Thursday, finished on the same mark and secured his place at Royal Troon in 2024.
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