Golf: 151st Open Championship - Royal Liverpool Golf Club - Hoylake, England

[Ben Grimm]

^ You're correct. Only the top ten should be allowed to win majors. I feel like I'm in 1930s Germany.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

^ You're correct. Only the top ten should be allowed to win majors. I feel like I'm in 1930s Germany.

I don’t know what to tell you. We’re golf fans. This does nothing for the sport in any way.

Harman makes you feel nothing. He’s not polarizing. He’s a guy that blends in with the furniture of the PGA Tour. Harman essentially has no fans that don’t know him on an individual basis, no one comes to events to watch him play that don’t know him individually, he has essentially no upward mobility with his game, it was a boring ending with him cruising to victory, and there’s nothing really to take from his win from a golf history perspective.

Take your hat off to him. He played great, but why do I have to like that he won? He’s allowed to win, but please explain why we can’t voice our displeasure with it.

 

[Dr John Carlson]

Yeah, one thing that stuck out to me from the broadcast was they kept mentioning how players respected the hell of out Harman because he'd maintained his PGA Tour card for like 11 or 12 straight years. Which, obviously, I agree is worthy of a ton of respect. But it's not really a compelling story for the audience. Do we know who holds the record for the longest time having maintained a card without dipping into the lifetime money list exemption list, or any other similar exemption? If that sort of thing is even tracked, it might be him. It also might not. It's not a record that holds a lot of gravity for people who aren't out there grinding year after year like the players do.

I'd rather the tournament conclude in a thrilling fashion with an uninspiring winner than a blowout win by a compelling character. I remember people complaining about the 2011 PGA Championship because they hadn't heard of Keegan Bradley or Jason Dufner. I was only marginally familiar with them, but I thoroughly enjoyed that tournament because the finish was exciting... I'll take that any day of the week over, say, the 2011 US Open which was a blowout win by a compelling character. But a 6 shot win by Brian Harman of all people? I'm good.

 

[DueDiligence]

Harman is winning with the basics of links golf that allows guys like him to contend, especially here. Don't hit bunkers and don't 3-putt.

Until right now I guess

Harman made 58 of 59 putts 10 feet and under. Plus a bunch of longer ones as well. He won't ever repeat that but he did it once when it mattered the most.

 

[Mr Rogers]

after hearing about how the fans were heckling him i'm not so upset he won. as a canadian, i usually find myself siding with Americans haha

 

[Filthy Dangles]

Harman made 58 of 59 putts 10 feet and under. Plus a bunch of longer ones as well. He won't ever repeat that but he did it once when it mattered the most.

True. Only Max Homa found more fairways than he did, too.

So it's not like he spanked the ball all over the the place, and made a bunch miracle putts and up and downs. He hit it straight and onto or very close to the green, and made a lot of medium-long range putts (still decent amount of luck involved in that), left manageble up and downs (think he found one bunker whole tourney) and made very few big mistakes.

The better and big name players couldn't capitalize and score consistently.

 

[MVP of West Hollywd]

Harman is the fluke major winner we all worry about. He’s not the worst of the past 25 years. I think he’s better than like a Micheel and Beem, but I think you can fairly say he’s the worst of the last 10 years and you have to go back to the 2009 PGA with YE Yang to find a guy you could fairly assert is worse. He’s not awful, he’s just like the 45th best golfer in the world and you hate to see those guys win majors with there being only 4 per year and as @Dr John Carlson mentioned, he has essentially no upward mobility. Clark probably has a worse record to this point, but I think he’ll at least pass Harman over the rest of their careers because he has more long-term ability. Harman is a career journeyman that had the week of his career. You hate to see it, but well, we were due for one of these major winners and it makes it doubly worse that the last two of 2023 (and for 8 1/2 months) are two guys that are two of the weaker major winners you’ll see in the current era, if not the two weakest.

Kind of. Harman's 2 wins before this look pretty weak, but to me, I'm not that flabbergasted he ended up a major winner one day, I thought he was an established good player, somewhere in the top 20-30 players in the world, he had at least one other major in 2017 US Open where he was a prominent contender. To me it feels more like Walker, Woodland, Bradley, Dufner, Willett (him and Bradley are probably the ones I knew the least before their major win), Lowry, Molinari if you remove that you knew he was hot coming in, etc., than a real rando like if Mito closed the deal. I don't know if Harman will win another major but I'll predict that he pops on the majors leaderboard again at least a few more times.

 

[Our Lady Peace]

Harman's a guy who hasn't closed off tournaments in the past where you thought he might have two or three more wins, but he was bound to win again - just so happened it was a major where the course fit his eye and everyone else had some sort of trouble to deal with.

Not to mention the big players just could not stay consistent. Rahm started off in 89th and despite a strong finish - this has been precisely a Rory problem of post-2014. Start off terribly and then dig yourself well out of the hole just to come up short. Hats off to Rahm, as he will one day be an Open champion.

Fleetwood coughed it up. Spieth could've made a push but forgot how to putt once again. Rory close, but again knocking on the door isn't enough when you've just won yet another non-major a week ago. Scheffler off his game.

 

[Ben Grimm]

British Open: Rory McIlroy’s major championship drought continues despite contending once again

“I can’t sit here and be too frustrated.”

sports.yahoo.com

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Kind of. Harman's 2 wins before this look pretty weak, but to me, I'm not that flabbergasted he ended up a major winner one day, I thought he was an established good player, somewhere in the top 20-30 players in the world, he had at least one other major in 2017 US Open where he was a prominent contender. To me it feels more like Walker, Woodland, Bradley, Dufner, Willett (him and Bradley are probably the ones I knew the least before their major win), Lowry, Molinari if you remove that you knew he was hot coming in, etc., than a real rando like if Mito closed the deal. I don't know if Harman will win another major but I'll predict that he pops on the majors leaderboard again at least a few more times.

Yeah, I should be clear that I’m not that surprised. He’s literally and figuratively a bulldog. Gets so much out of what he has, and is scared of no one. I have a lot of respect for a guy his size without big speed being able to continuously hang in there with these players that have such an easier time generating good birdie opportunities. He pops up in some of these tournaments, and it’s not like he’s some absolute no name journeyman that is playing his 2nd career major. It’s kind of expected at this point that he’ll lurk in some of these tournaments.

So in that sense, it’s not that surprising. It’s been a long time though where we didn’t get any Harman type of major winners. It was fair to wonder if the depth of the game had become too good for these players to win them, but I think he showed that it’s still in there every once in a while.

 

[MVP of West Hollywd]

Yeah, I should be clear that I’m not that surprised. He’s literally and figuratively a bulldog. Gets so much out of what he has, and is scared of no one. I have a lot of respect for a guy his size without big speed being able to continuously hang in there with these players that have such an easier time generating good birdie opportunities. He pops up in some of these tournaments, and it’s not like he’s some absolute no name journeyman that is playing his 2nd career major. It’s kind of expected at this point that he’ll lurk in some of these tournaments.

So in that sense, it’s not that surprising. It’s been a long time though where we didn’t get any Harman type of major winners. It was fair to wonder if the depth of the game had become too good for these players to win them, but I think he showed that it’s still in there every once in a while.

I did think we were due for a few random winners as since covid the worst had probably been Fitzpatrick who was still a name due to being a young hotshot prospect at one point - and then we got Clark and Harman.

 

[Mr Rogers]

Harman seems to have a fairly simple swing as far as pros go. definitely think he'll be a factor at certain venues that suit him in the future

 

[Filthy Dangles]

Harman seems to have a fairly simple swing as far as pros go. definitely think he'll be a factor at certain venues that suit him in the future

About as textbook a swing from a positions and mechanics standpoint. mainly, he just lacks clubhead speed to consistently give himself scoring opportunites and short clubs that other top players get more often.

my clubhead speed with my stock driver swing is basically as fast as his, maybe a tad faster actually. (I just don't find the center of the clubface as nearly as consistently as he does).