Brian Harman Romps to British Open Victory at Royal Liverpool
Brian Harman knew Saturday evening that sleep might be hard to come by, as much as he knew he needed it. He had been here — the 54-hole leader at a major tournament — six years ago and knew the agonizing cost of a fitful night: a runner-up finish, months and then years of what-ifs, a career not on the margins but not among the elite.
He slept well enough this time. Harman, nestled atop the leaderboard at Royal Liverpool Golf Club since Friday, made a methodical march on Sunday to win the British Open by six strokes, finishing at 13 under par. With a round defined more by get-it-done grit than star-turn splash, Harman held off a band of challengers whose tournament scores wound up swarmed around each other instead of all that close to his.
It was the largest margin of victory at a men’s golf major since the 2020 U.S. Open.
Harman had a five-stroke lead at daybreak, a comfortable gap but not an insurmountable one, not at a tournament that in 1999 saw Paul Lawrie overcome a 10-shot deficit on Sunday to win at Carnoustie. That history aside, the greatest mystery for most of Sunday at a decidedly soggy Royal Liverpool seemed to be not whether Harman would win, but by how much.
Unlike Carnoustie, Royal Liverpool, hosting for the 13th time, has long been kind to the men who climbed its Open leaderboards early. With his victory, Harman became the seventh player to win an Open at the course after having led after two rounds.
Source: The New York Times
