Little Big Man

Harman stands tall at Hoylake, earning his place in golf history

Sitting in the main cabin of a Virgin Atlantic jet at Manchester Airport before it took off for New York the day after the 151^st Open Championship, my seat mate and I looked up at the same time and saw the Claret Jug being put into an overhead compartment a few rows in front of us. Well, as evidenced by both a price tag dangling from the bauble’s shiny bottom and the knowledge that the newest Champion Golfer of the Year had been on an earlier flight—“Brian Harman shook my hand,” a security guard had told a fellow traveler I saw at the gate—the carry-on wasn’t the Claret Jug.

But glimpsing a faux trophy on board spurred memories. In the summer of 1989, I had been on the Monday-after flight from Scotland to America with Mark Calcavecchia after he had defeated Greg Norman and Wayne Grady in a playoff at Royal Troon. I was a working photographer in those days and took a picture of Calcavechia holding the jug in his lap, later sending him an 8 x 10 glossy. Two years later, I was waiting in baggage claim at JFK next to a triumphant Ian Baker-Finch, who held a hard-shell case containing the spoils he earned at Royal Birkdale. When the Australian’s top form subsequently disappeared and was never regained, the recollection of the moment when he got off the plane that day a conquering hero—a young, elite athlete for whom surely this was only the beginning—lingered as a reminder of how fickle golf can be.

The names on the Claret Jug document a century and a half of golf success. (Bill Fields)

There were a couple of Open participants on the trip back from Royal Liverpool. I saw Max Homa take his infant into a lavatory; Cameron Young was two rows behind me. There likely were players in addition to those Americans who finished in the top 10 on board as well. But anyone not named Brian Harman was going home without the oldest trophy in professional golf, a prize presented for 150 years that has journeyed by train and ship, auto and airplane, in the company of the man whose engraved name will be on it forever, little letters marking one of the biggest achievements in sports. When Harman is back home in Georgia, until he relinquishes it next summer, he can admire it, drink from it, pose with it. The excellent golfers who didn’t win it have to try to solve the links puzzle next time, or the time after that, or some year when their game does come together the way Harman’s did at Hoylake. Avoiding trouble off the tee and having a putting week for the ages, it seemed as if he was tasked only with fitting together a dozen large pieces instead of the thousand small ones challenging everyone else.

I went to my first Open 35 years ago at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, less than a two-hour drive north of Royal Liverpool. I had only traveled out of the United States twice before, to cover tournaments in Argentina and The Bahamas. So much on my maiden Open journey was new: jet lag, driving on the left, shandies, bacon rolls with HP Sauce, policemen without guns. When I stepped out of my B&B in Blackpool the second morning after arriving, it felt like a wall of wind was going to blow me over. An elderly couple was nearby, starting their walk. “There’s a wee breeze today,” the man said. That afternoon I played golf at St. Annes Old Links, and conditions hadn’t improved much. I can still see one of my push-sliced drives riding a hard left-to-right wind like it was in an F-15.

The 1988 championship will be remembered for two things. Seve Ballesteros, with a closing 65, took down Nick Price and defending champion Nick Faldo. Weather canceled a round at the Open for the first time since hellacious winds hit Royal Birkdale in 1961. Saturday’s play at Lytham was abandoned at midday after several greens were flooded, forcing the final 18 holes to be played on Monday. There had been some serious wind prior to the weekend downpours, Thursday morning being particularly miserable, with temperatures in the high 40s and winds gusting to 40 mph. Ballesteros teed off in the worst of the weather and played one of his finest rounds, going out in 30 and shooting 67 despite two unplayable lies on the tortuous back nine. Fellow pros ran out of adjectives describing the performance by Ballesteros, who at 31 was striving for his first major title since St. Andrews in 1984 and attempting to reassert himself at the top of the game after late mistakes cost him at the Masters in ’86 and ’87.

Price held a two-stroke victory over Ballesteros and Faldo through 54 holes, but the Spaniard ruled in the final round. At the site where he had been a scrambling genius nine years earlier in winning his first major title, this was steady Seve. He only missed three fairways and three greens. After a birdie-eagle-birdie stretch on the front nine, he nearly holed his approach on No. 16 to set up a decisive tap-in birdie. Ballesteros led Price by two going to the 18^th and settled the outcome with a deft chip from the over the green.

It felt good to be there for a Ballesteros major victory, and it sure seemed there would be other big triumphs for the man who led the late-20^th century European golf resurgence. But like Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson, who also won their last major while in their early 30s, Ballesteros hardly factored in another major championship, picking up only three top-10s following his second triumph at Royal Lytham.

Many of the greats in men’s golf have, like Ballesteros, won their fifth major not terribly long after earning their fourth. Brooks Koepka got No. 5 at this year’s PGA Championship, becoming the 20^th man with five or more major titles four years after bagging his fourth. The gap between four and five was shorter for Phil Mickelson, Gary Player, Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus. It was just a month for Tiger Woods, in his magical summer of 2000. Within the last four decades, both Raymond Floyd and Ernie Els earned four majors but couldn’t obtain a fifth title, but Floyd was 43 years old and Els 42 when they won the 1986 U.S. Open and 2012 Open Championship respectively.

That’s why so many eyes were on Rory McIlroy last week at Royal Liverpool. He is 34, and he had gotten to Hoylake having played 34 majors without winning one, the 2014 PGA Championship being an increasingly distant memory. But he arrived in the northwest of England straight off a fantastic victory at the Genesis Scottish Open, his 24^th career title on the PGA Tour, finishing the windy final round with two of the classiest iron shots—and the birdie putts after each—executed in a long time. The low, faded, pin-seeking 200-yard 2-iron into a stiff breeze on the 18^th hole at the Renaissance Club was as good as it gets. Was such majestic golf a sign of what was to come at Royal Liverpool? Was McIlroy going to end the drought where he had won the Open nine years prior?

McIlroy figured in the proceedings, just as he had in the PGA Championship and U.S. Open after missing cut at the Masters, but a fifth major wasn’t in the cards. As has sometimes been the case during the long major dry spell, McIlroy began the final round in teasingly good form, with three consecutive birdies starting on No. 3. He was even par the rest of the way, though, closing with 68 to finish in a tie for sixth, seven behind Harman. McIlroy improved each day, with scores of 71, 70, 69 and 68. It was a progression that was only a winner for the fellow I heard about Sunday evening who placed two pre-championship bets: He had gotten Rory’s daily scores correct; his other wager was Harman to win at 80 to 1. If he had splurged another pound on the improbable exacta, he would be on easy street. If McIlroy can eventually pick off another major and have a handful of golf’s most important titles, it will be after the longest such gap from a fourth to a fifth and therefore one of the most satisfying victories in golf history.

At an Open held on an antique links, thinking about the past is as natural as seeing a spectator making a golf swing with an umbrella or a marshal doing the same with a “Quiet Please” sign. After all, George Morris, brother of Old Tom Morris, had a hand in the original nine holes at Royal Liverpool, and George’s son, Jack, led the expansion to 18 holes. The first Amateur Championship was held at Hoylake in 1885; the Open was first played there in 1897. Five years later, Sandy Herd was the first champion to use a rubber-core, wound Haskell ball. J.H. Taylor, Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones (in his Grand Slam year of 1930), and Tiger Woods are among the subsequent Open champions at the course where the River Dee estuary meets the Irish Sea.

In the Open at large, sixty years ago Jack Nicklaus began an astounding 18-year stretch in the Open during which he compiled three victories, seven seconds, three thirds, two fourths, a fifth, a six and a tie for 12^th. Fifty years ago, Tom Weiskopf won at Royal Troon in the last Open that players had to use the small (1.62-inch diameter) ball. Forty years ago, Tom Watson won the last of his five Opens. Thirty years ago, Greg Norman played some of his finest golf in winning at Royal St. George’s. Twenty years ago, it was surprise champion Ben Curtis, No. 396 in the world, winning in his debut. A decade ago, Phil Mickelson won and Jordan Spieth debuted.

As for Royal Liverpool, the most pertinent milestone this year might have been, on April 23, the 100^th anniversary of the birth of the late Roberto De Vicenzo, who in 1967 at Hoylake, at age 44, became the first major champion from South America. De Vicenzo, who learned the game as a caddie in his native Argentina, was a prolific winner, capturing 229 tournaments around the globe, including the national opens of 15 countries. De Vincenzo, who died at 94 six years ago, surely would have fancied the final leaderboard last week, when the top 10 (and ties) featured golfers from nine countries including Argentina’s Emiliano Grillo (T-6). Shubhankar Sharma, the 27-year-old from India, tied for eighth place, the best major finish by a golfer from that country. Further proof of the international nature of this Open came from Christo Lamprecht, the 6-foot-8 Georgia Tech golfer who dazzled with a first-round 66 on his way to becoming the first South African to win the silver medal for low amateur first awarded in 1949.

If golfers of Lamprecht’s stature are increasingly part of the sport’s future, Harman, who is a slightly built 5-7, is proof that there is still room in elite golf in the 2020s for someone his size. Long known for his skill on and around the greens, he said he had been working on his putting recently, using a mirrored training aid to stop cutting putts. The feeling that he was “drawing” his putts goes back a long time, to Bobby Locke and the putting guru George Low. Using a model with a bulky head, Harman putted better at the Open than anyone in years, only missing once inside 10 feet and requiring just 106 putts over 72 holes, gaining more than 11 strokes on the greens. It was hard to fathom that Harman had only won two PGA Tour events before this impressive performance, the most recent in Charlotte in 2017.

The gallery follows the final pairing on a rainy Sunday at Royal Liverpool. (Bill Fields)

Starting the final round with a five-stroke lead over Cameron Young, with Jon Rahm another shot back after a Saturday 63, Harman bogeyed two of the first five holes on a very soggy Sunday, but the Georgian bounced back quickly with birdie putts of 14 and 24 feet on the next two holes. Harman’s lead was back to five, and no one was going to catch him. He finished at 13-under 271 and won by six, becoming at 36 the oldest first-time major champion since Sergio Garcia won the 2017 Masters at 37.

Sixty years after Bob Charles of New Zealand became the first left-handed golfer to win the Open and 50 years since Sam Adams, a North Carolinian, was the first American lefty to win on the PGA Tour (at Quad Cities), Harman joined Charles, Mickelson, Mike Weir and Bubba Watson as southpaw major champions. With his steadfast play in golf’s oldest championship on one of its first courses, Harman had taken the pressure off the trophy engraver. In the unrelenting rain he accepted and posed on the home green with the old jug, its insides soon to filled with pints instead of precipitation, every sip well earned.