Good for you, Brian. You are now the Champion Golfer of the Year, and as Cameron Smith was tearfully reminded last week, you’ve only got a year before you have to give that special trophy back. So drink up.
The Champion Golfer of the Year in 2023 produced a performance not as miraculous as Cam Smith’s last year but equally strong in the circumstances of today.
Harman has devised an entire strategy around what he can do best: win around the corners. It has led to 12-year career on the PGA Tour and wins at every level he’s played. And now, an Open championship victory.
Beneath that veneer of positivity, there must surely linger some doubt. What does the Belfast boy need to do to turn things round? It is obvious: he needs to putt better.
It was a week that every professional golfer hopes to have – one where you’re in control of all facets of your game during a four-day span on the game’s biggest stage where everything seems as easy as ever.
Hoylake is a venue known perhaps as much for its legacy of world-class winners as it is for its historically insidious holes where out-of-bounds plays a somewhat outsized role.
It has happened before, but not since 1985 when Manuel Ballesteros joined his wee brother, Seve, in the Open Championship field at Royal St George’s alongside another pair of siblings, Tateo and Naomichi Ozaki from Japan. So the sight of Matt and Alex Fitzpatrick and Rasmus and Nicolai Hojgaard in the starting line-up this week is unusual rather than unique.