[PHOTOS: Orlando Ramirez]
The failed close calls to winning on the PGA Tour can be excruciating in the moment, but as the scar tissue builds so does the wisdom.
Harris English has been a loyal solider on some of the hardest setups in non-majors, playing the Farmers Open on the Torrey Pines golf courses for nearly every year of his 14-year pro career. He’d made 25 circuits around the past US Open host South course heading into this year’s Farmers, and there’d been some tough near-misses. In 2015, English birdied the 72nd hole to get into a four-man playoff but could only make par at 18 on the first extra hole and Jason Day eventually won. In the 2021 US Open here, the Georgian produced an impressive final-round 68 on Torrey South and was the clubhouse leader until Jon Rahm charged on the back nine and shot 67 to win.
In the 2015 Farmers defeat, English drove it poorly in the last round and couldn’t overcome that. For this rare Saturday finish, he again got wild with the driver, finding only four fairways a week after leading the American Express field off the tee.
That could have doomed him. It probably should have, considering the four-inch rough and cool temperatures and breeze that weren’t that conducive to recoveries. But English used both the maturity of a decade more experience and the knowledge of how to move around Torrey without his best stuff, and the result was a satisfying victory for numerous reasons.
At the top of the list might be overcoming challenging conditions that went from sunny, hard and dry early in the week, to winds of more than 30mph in the second round, to cool, cloudy and breezy for the final round. English overcame all of it with a closing one-over- par 73 that was the highest final-round number for a Farmers winner since John Daly shot 74 in his 2004 playoff win. The winning total of eight-under 280 was the second-highest since the redesign of the South course in 2001.
The only golfer who truly challenged English was third-year tour player Sam Stevens, who began the day six shots behind and shot the only round in the 60s – a 68 – among the top six finishers. But Stevens ruined his chances to force a playoff when he went for the par-5 18th green in two and came up short in the water. A nice up-and-down save of par ended up leaving him one shot back.
In reflecting on the smallest of differences between his 2015 loss here and now the win, English said, “When I lost that tournament, I would have come off the course and said, ‘Well, if I would have just driven it better, I could have won this event.’ But today, I didn’t feel like I hit it that bad… It’s hard to hit fairways out there. I guess being out here for 14 years now, that’s kind of what I’ve learned is, you don’t have to play perfect golf. That’s playing this golf course years and years and having a lot of experience, I kind of know where to miss it, and I’ve had a lot of those same shots before or same chips or same putts. You kind of build those in the memory bank and relive some of those good putts and good chips that you’ve hit.
“I feel like I’ve definitely grown as a player of letting the round come to me and not trying to force it. I probably drove it the same today as I did back in [2015], but I had a total different outlook on it. I knew it was going to be a grind, and you’ve just got to make pars. And it doesn’t have to look pretty; you’ve just got to get the job done.”
English opened the final round with a bogey at the first hole and suffered another lost shot at the fifth, but he countered with what would be his only birdie of the day at the par-5 sixth. After that, he ground out the round with 12 straight pars. His best work came around and on the greens, where the putter he’s used since college came through time and again for critical par putts while he missed half the greens. He was third in the field for the week in strokes gained/putting. Needing a par at 18 to win, English hooked his drive into the left rough, but managed to get back into the fairway and hit a wedge to 25 feet for an easy two-putt par.
“Haven’t putted well the past couple weeks in Hawaii and Palm Springs last week, but I worked a lot more this week and I felt like my speed was really dialled in and every putt was going in at the right speed,” English said. “It’s nice when you hit it to 40 or 50 feet a few holes and you can get it up there to tap-in distance. That really won me the golf tournament.”
The victory was the fifth of English’s tour career and the first since the 35-year-old underwent hip surgery in early 2022 after a decade of dealing with constant pain. He’d seemingly put his career on upward trajectory in 2021 by winning twice that season and making the US Ryder Cup team that won at Whistling Straits.
But English was out for nearly five months after the surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right hip, and he didn’t challenge for another win until the 2023 Arnold Palmer Invitational, when he tied for second. Since then, he’s gotten fully back, with six more top-10 finishes during the past two seasons.
“I knew it was going to take a lot of work [to get back after surgery],” English said. “I’m not scared of putting in the work, putting in the rehab, I just wanted to get back. The biggest thing I missed was just travelling and playing tournament golf… I love it out here. You miss seeing a lot of your friends for a few months and you miss getting the juices going and standing there on the first tee and got the butterflies going.
“And when you win, you never know when your next time’s going to be, so you’ve got to really cherish the moment. It’s so hard to win out here on the PGA Tour, there’s so many good players. There’s young guys coming out here every single year that are trying to take your job and it’s awesome to see it. It pushes me to get better. And at 35 I feel like I’ve got a lot more years out here to compete and just keep getting better at this crazy game.”
There was one particularly special moment when it was over – his wife, Helen Marie, and 1-year-old daughter, Emilia, coming onto the green to give him a hug. “I’ve been seeing over the years of people’s families coming out on 18 green and their children coming out to see them win. I’m so happy that she was there to see it. I have no idea if I’m going to win again or when I’m going to win again, but we’ll have those pictures for a lifetime.”
In the champion’s view, his family gets a big assist. On a tournament Sunday by himself, English said he’d normally be glued to ESPN or Golf Channel. Those channels don’t fly with a little one, so there were kids’ programs before the tee-time.
“We might be on to something,” English said with a smile.
