Harman dominates the field at Open Championship
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Brian Harman won the 151st Open Championship on Sunday, cruising to victory at England's Royal Liverpool Golf Club.
Why it matters: It's the first major victory for the 36-year-old American, who hadn't won on the PGA Tour in over six years (May 7, 2017, at the Wells Fargo Championship).
- Harman finished at 13-under, six strokes better than anyone else.
- Four players finished tied for second at seven-under: Tom Kim, Sepp Straka, Jon Rahm and Jason Day.
By the numbers: Royal Liverpool is famous for its nasty bunkers, with 81 total (4.5 per hole). Harman found just three all week.
- The Georgia native put on a putting performance for the ages, sinking 58 of 59 putts (98.3%) from inside 10 feet.
- He's just the third left-handed player to win the Claret Jug, joining Bob Charles (1963) and Phil Mickelson (2013).
What he's saying: Harman wasn't a favorite in Las Vegas (125-1 underdog) or outside the ropes, where fans jeered him most of the weekend. If they didn't want him to win, they should have been nicer…
- "When I made the second bogey yesterday, a guy when I was passing him said, 'Harman, you don't have the stones for this.'"
- "That helped," said Harman, often overlooked as one of the smallest players on tour (5-foot-7, 150 pounds). "That helped a lot."
- "It helped snap me back into, ya know, 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's gonna be good."
The big picture: The first two majors of 2023 were won by big names in Rahm (Masters) and Brooks Koepka (PGA). The last two were won by relatively unknown first-time champions, with Harman following U.S. Open champ Wyndham Clark.
Elsewhere … Akshay Bhatia won the Barracuda Championship on Sunday, marking the first time in PGA Tour history that two lefties won on the same day.
