In what is the busiest time of the golfing year in the Middle East, we preview the DP World Tour’s five-week swing of events which span across Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, Bahrain and Qatar – spearheaded by the 35th edition of the Hero Dubai Desert Classic, and an exclusive interview with the current Champion Golfer of the Year, Brian Harman. We get to know more about the journey of UAE National Player, Joshua Grenville-Wood, and Amy Condon, the only female professional in Abu Dhabi who is growing the women’s game. A catch-up with eGolf Megastore, as they are expanding their stores in the region and Club Lab Golf shows us what goes into getting your clubs fitted and built.

All this and much, much more in the January 2024 edition of Golf Digest Middle East.

The issue is again free to our loyal audience. You can scroll through the ISSUU link provided here or download to your favourite device for later. Alternatively, pick up a copy at your favourite club. Whatever option you take, we hope you enjoy the read.

The post Get the January 2024 edition of Golf Digest Middle East FREE here today! appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

They will join defending champion and World Number Two Rory McIlroy at the iconic Emirates Golf Club for the first Rolex Series event of the 2024 Race to Dubai, from January 18-21.

Reigning Open Champion Harman sealed his maiden Major title at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in July during a stellar season which saw him notch up six further top tens – including two runner-up finishes – on the PGA TOUR and make his Ryder Cup debut in Rome in September. 

The World Number Nine, who will make his Hero Dubai Desert Classic debut in January, said: “I’m excited to tee it up in Dubai for the first time. It looks like a stunning venue that has identified great champions. I’d love to add my name to that list.”

Six-time DP World Tour winner and Dubai resident Fleetwood is more familiar with the Majlis Course, with the World Number 14 returning for his 13th consecutive appearance at the event.

The 2017 Race to Dubai champion rounded out a memorable season – which included his second Ryder Cup win – with a runner-up finish in Dubai at the DP World Tour Championship, and he is aiming for further success in the United Arab Emirates, following his back-to-back victories in Abu Dhabi in 2017 and 2018.

Fleetwood said: “This an event that I love, I’ve played the Hero Dubai Desert Classic every year since I came out on Tour. I look forward to playing in front of friends and family again in January.”

Hatton, who enjoyed Ryder Cup success alongside European teammates Fleetwood and McIlroy in Rome, has four top ten finishes in his nine previous Hero Dubai Desert Classic appearances. He has also tasted past success in the region, with the last of his six DP World Tour titles coming at the 2021 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.

The World Number 12 will be seeking a record-equalling fifth Rolex Series win when he tees it up in Dubai once again.

Hatton said: “It’s always a great tournament and I’ve played well in the past. I’m looking forward to getting back to Emirates Golf Club and hopefully adding to my success in the region.” 

American Young will join compatriot Harman in making his Hero Dubai Desert Classic debut, and just his second regular DP World Tour event appearance following the 2022 Genesis Scottish Open.

The 26-year-old, who was named PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year for the 2021/22 season, enjoyed five top ten finishes this season, including runner-up at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play and T7 at the Masters, adding to his burgeoning Major credentials following top three finishes at the US PGA Championship and The Open in 2022.  

The World Number 21 said: “I’m looking forward to getting over to the Hero Dubai Desert Classic for the first time. I’ve heard many great things about both Dubai and the event. It’ll be a fun week of competition to help kickstart my year.”

Simon Corkill, Executive Tournament Director of Hero Dubai Desert Classic, said: “We’re thrilled to be welcoming Brian Harman and Cameron Young for the first time to the Hero Dubai Desert Classic 2024 while also seeing the return of Tommy Fleetwood and Tyrrell Hatton again.

“They have all achieved great success in their careers so far and their rankings speaks for itself of how competitive they are. By lining up for the tournament not only makes the field stronger but it also solidifies the Hero Dubai Desert Classic’s position as one of the best golf tournaments in the world and presents a fantastic opportunity for fans to watch the best stars in action.”

The Hero Dubai Desert Classic will be celebrating its 35th anniversary and its recent official certification as the first Geo-Certified event in the Middle East, and the first in the DP World Tour’s Rolex Series.

This year’s event combines world-class golf with a huge array of family-friendly entertainment.  Spectators can look forward to a wider variety of options off the course than ever before with something for fans of all ages to enjoy across the tournament. 

Free general admission tickets and limited hospitality packages for the Dallah Lounge are still available at dubaidesertclassic.com. 

Organisers are also encouraging fans to use the Metro service to travel to and from the tournament, with Al Khail station located directly outside the club’s main entrance.

Main image: David Cannon/Getty Images

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Now, the last thing you want to see in sport, and particularly in a competition as emotionally volatile as the Ryder Cup, is to have your opponent christened with a cool, sinewy, memorable nickname. And ‘Brian the Butcher’ is the kind of nickname that people print on T-shirts and that internet sites (like this one) enjoy recycling for their headlines. It denotes a cold-blooded barbarity.

Does anyone really want to face THAT guy?

Who knows how much Harman will play this weekend in the 44th Ryder Cup at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club. It is, after all, his debut in the biennial competition. But chances are that his experience in emphatically closing out his victory in the 151st Open Championship has left him better prepared than most rookies who begin their Ryder Cup careers abroad.

“I think he’ll be able to draw on it more than he may realise until he has to,” said Tom Lehman, who won the 1996 Open at Royal Lytham and St Annes. “It was pretty obvious that the crowd was not in his corner at Hoylake, and he just stuck to what he was doing. He handled it all so well, and even though the Ryder Cup is different than the Open, he’s had a bit of a baptism.”

“I just I feel like he’s cut and made for these kind of teams,” said US captain Zach Johnson, who also owns a Cclaret Jug after winning at St Andrews in 2015. “I think anybody’s win in a stage of that magnitude can be extremely beneficial. I didn’t watch every shot inside the ropes or even outside the ropes that he hit during the Open, but it’s pretty documented that there were some things kind of jeered and whatnot, and that’s to be expected, given where it was and who he is and who he’s not, right? Knowing Brian, that’s probably more fuel to the fire, if you will. He has that ability and that talent, that mentality, to kind of make that be a positive.”

It’s bad news for Europe that Harman has embraced the ‘Brian the Butcher’ moniker. His wife Kelly threw him a ‘Brian the Butcher’-themed party. She had T-shirts and golf balls made up with her own ‘Brian the Butcher’ logo — see, what did we tell you? — and guests could take selfies with a ‘Brian the Butcher’ photo. The only thing that wasn’t butchered was the entrée. The assembled media couldn’t help but ask if the renowned hunter killed anything for the occasion and butchered it himself, a skill of which he is proud.

Nope. He brought in a food truck and served hot dogs and hamburgers.

Harman took all these questions in stride during his unimpeded march to the Open title, his first major and only his third PGA Tour win. On Wednesday at Marco Simone, he was engaging and generally un-butcher-like, talking about his love of trees and his latest vanity purchase, a new tractor.

But don’t worry, folks. He can turn on the harm.

Though he is appearing in his first Ryder Cup, the 36-year-old Georgia native isn’t without team match play experience. A former US Junior Amateur champion — which also is contested at match play — twice competed in the Walker Cup, going a combined 4-1-2 in US victories in 2005 and 2009. He likes match play. And he likes bringing an attitude to match play.

“You have to sometimes, especially if things aren’t going your way,” he said when he was asked if he takes head-to-head competition personally. “I’ve always enjoyed match play because it really is, there’s such a different dynamic. Stroke play is basically you versus you, you versus the golf course. In match play it’s you versus the golf course, you versus you, you versus the other guy.”

Harman, a 5ft, 7ins vessel of intensity that he hides behind his general “aw-shucks” demeanour, admitted to fabricating reasons to make it personal. “Just made-up stuff,” he said. Then he invoked the name Michael Jordan, the basketball legend who established himself as one of the most ruthless competitors in the pantheon of sports.

Brian Harman throws his golf ball on the 18th green after winning the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool. Stuart Franklin/R&A

“I love the story Michael Jordan told about the guy talked trash to him and he goes out and scores 40 and the guy never said a word to him,” the affable left-hander said. “Just totally made up. I love that story.”

Harman might well be built for this occasion. He’s been aching to prove it. But no one ever really knows for sure. It’s probably wise that he harbours a healthy amount of trepidation about the approaching three-day sausage grinder. He’s been made aware that whatever acidic remarks Royal Liverpool fans sent in his direction was only an appetiser to what awaits him and his US teammates at Marco Simone

“Yeah, I don’t think there’s any way to prepare for it,” he said. “I expect them to be as fervent and I expect to be at times overwhelmed by it, just like I was at the Open Championship. It was overwhelming at times. The best you can do is just acknowledge it and just move forward and try not to let it affect you as best you can. But it will affect you. You’d be silly not to think that.

“Obviously the home teams in the Ryder Cups have been extremely successful, and a lot of that has to do with the fans. They can affect outcomes of matches. It’s just our job to try to stay as present as possible and execute more than the other guys and see what happens.”

The American team are hunting their first victory in Europe in 30 years, and they have in their corner a player eager to prove to a hostile crowd that his victory at Hoylake was no fluke. It was the opposing side that gave him his new nickname, and they’ll rue that day if ‘Brian the Butcher’ once again proves to be a cut above.

Main image: Brian Harman is playing in his first Ryder Cup after winning the Open Championship. Andreas Solaro

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To paraphrase the famous saying somewhat: Behind every great golfer is a great coach. Just ask any of the pros who have sought the guidance of the likes of Hank Haney, Sean Foley, Peter Cowen or anyone with the last name Harmon.

These are the men who live away from the spotlight, working on the sidelines to ensure their pupils are ready and able to give their best when they step on to the fairways.

Now there is another name you can add to the list of coaching greats who helped make waves at the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool last month.

American pro Brian Harman left all trailing in his wake in Hoylake, storming to a six-stroke victory, showing nerves of steel in front of a hostile English crowd, and put on a putting masterclass in some seriously nasty British weather.

Cradling the claret jug on the Sunday, Harman, who has a Ryder Cup to look forward to next month, was the first to admit this was far from a one-man show, and thanked his family and team, including coach Justin Parsons.

The 36-year-old has been working with Parsons since 2019, taking over from the late Jack Lamkin, and years of hard work eventually bore fruit with Harman’s third pro win and their first together (he had previously won the John Deere Classic in 2014 and the 2017 staging of the Wells Fargo Championship).

Speaking in the 100th edition of Golf Digest Middle East back in 2017, Parsons said: “I would love to think in nine years’ time I have helped a player to achieve a major championship victory.”

He did it in six.

“No disrespect to the fact I get pleasure from helping you strike a seven iron better or whatever, but I think professionally what really thrills you the most is to see someone you have nurtured come up and perform higher than they have before. That’s what Butchy [Harmon] always says to us, your biggest job when you have got a good player is: ‘Don’t screw it up.’”

Back in the present, Parsons is now an Elite Golf Instructor at The Sea Island Golf Performance Center in Harman’s home of St Simons, Georgia. But it was quite a journey for the coach to reach the top, having begun in his home in Northern Ireland before cutting his teeth in the UAE.

The UAE was certainly instrumental in getting Parsons to see the wider world of golf after first picking up a club and playing around on his local course as a kid back home.

“My late uncle had given me an intro to golf when I was about 10 or 11, but it was basically just how to hold a club,” he told Golf Digest Middle East. “It wasn’t until I was 13 that I really got into golf, when a friend asked me to play with him. We ended up playing the entire day, and from that moment on I can remember being hooked on the game. That was in the summer, and by the following year I was a competitive amateur and I went on to play in boys’ team events all over Ireland.

“I took to it very quickly, and having gone through the amateur ranks, I was teaching in Bangor when a client took me to Dubai. We played golf every day. This was around 2004 and we were up at Jebel Ali and we played there, the Montgomerie and, I think, Dubai Creek. I was just blown away by the facilities, they were just incredible.

“Even back then, Dubai felt like such a buzzing place and felt to me like a really cool place for a young person to be.

“Having met some of the club teams — I met Wayne [Johnson] while at the Montgomerie — and I decided on a wing and a prayer to head over and it all worked out. I will always be grateful to Wayne for giving me that start in 2005 and joining the team at the Monty.

“I learnt so much about the operational side of an academy. It really was an invaluable lesson in how an upscale property is managed.”

It is no understatement to say Parsons was making an impression, but even he was taken aback as his career went in a new direction. 

“I rose to the position of Director of Instruction in 2007 and then came my next opportunity,” he explained. “In 2008, I was watching the FA Cup final with a few of the golfing guys in Dubai and my phone rang. I saw it was an American number so I went outside to take the call. It was Claude Harmon III — we had met a couple of times before — and he asked if would like to help him open the Butch Harmon School at the Els. I thought it was just such a great offer from the ‘First ‘Family’ of golf instruction, and immediately I told him I was interested.

“Again I was so fortunate to be working with guys in Dubai who made it fairly streamlined for me to make the move from one position to another in the UAE, which was not as common as it is now.

“I started in the late summer of that year by procuring and creating programmes and looking at who we would have on the staff. We were fortunate to have Butch come over in early 2009 and it has been a good run since and the facility has been a great success.”

As his stature grew, Parsons found himself working with professionals in Europe and the States and, with a young family in the UAE, the travel began to keep him away from home more and more. 

“While I was not actively throwing my CV around, there were some who knew I would consider an opportunity in the States,” he told us. “Todd Anderson, an excellent fellow coach for the likes of Billy Horschel, had left his position at Sea Island around 2016 and there was a growing feeling that they needed someone to occupy that role of teaching Tour players and they also had plans to open the Golf Performance Center, which has become an incredible facility on par with everything in the UAE.

Sea Island

“Through some of the contacts in America, we had some approaches made and what it would take to come over. In the summer of 2018, my wife and I came over to the US Open at Shinnecock Hills and we combined that with a trip to St Simons and we had a good look around. It felt like a great place, not only to continue my PGA Tour work but also to establish a home base for my wife and kids where Dad wasn’t going to be away as much. It is a beautiful island and a great place to raise the children.”

While he was thrust into the limelight somewhat thanks to Harman’s success at Royal Liverpool, Parsons had already been well-established in coaching circles for many years. 

Eliot VanOtteren/Sea Island

“The Brian Harman adventure has been one of many,” he said. “I have helped numerous notable players in Europe — Darren Clarke, Colin Montgomerie and I started out with David Howell and Michael Hoey back in the day — those were the guys I was regularly working on tour with. We had Will Smith and Hugh Grant out at the Els golf school, guys who are very connected to the UAE like Dwight Yorke and Brian Lara would come down too.

“It was very cool to be part of all that in Dubai, where you would see so many excellent players, stars and celebrities, and you would pick up an awful lot from them too.

“In my last couple of years in Dubai, I was helping Peter Uihlein and Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel, and they were mainly playing in the PGA Tour, which is what took me across to the States so much. While I was there I was lucky enough to work with Michael Thompson, who had won a PGA tour event in our first year together. Then I also had Harris English, who went on a great run and won twice, which kinda led to be being on the coaching team for the United States Ryder Cup team at Whistling Straits, which was a very proud moment, if slightly strange to be on the ‘other side’ from which I have always supported.

“I am also helping Davis Love III with his swing on the Senior Tour. Interspersed with that, I have helped Seamus Power, Patton Kizzire, Ben Coles, Will Gordon, Branden Grace, so there is quite a decent list there.”

Now the Parsons family is well settled in St Simons, Justin has had time to reflect on his past life in the UAE and how things have changed for him professionally and personally. 

“We do miss a number of things about Dubai, and it will always be special to me as that’s really where it all began,” he said. “There is the vibrancy of the city and the multinational dynamic, the pace we enjoyed in our twenties. Now we are in our forties, the pace here is a little slower and it gives us a chance to reflect on things. My wife teaches yoga and, looking back, Dubai has a special place in our hearts personally and professionally and we wouldn’t have done it any other way.”

MIND CONTROL

Back to that major moment and, while Harman had not won a title since 2017, Parsons knew it was just a matter of time before things clicked and there was no need to massively change anything. All the signs were there that something special could be about to happen at the Scottish Open the week before the showdown in Hoylake.

“We met up at the Renaissance on Tuesday, and he reacts and responds very well to links golf — the conditions are good for his iron play and I think it suits the way he putts the ball and the creativity he has as a player,” Parsons said. “As we went through the week at the Renaissance, I don’t think we changed anything. The putting system he runs remained the same, the full-swing stuff we have implemented over the past two or three years was pretty much the same. We were in a good position going into the weekend, and Rory [McIlroy] was hitting some brilliant shots in tough conditions while Brian settled for finishing eighth.

“On the Sunday before the Open, I was down at Royal Liverpool having a look at the course, looking at how it was going to play, and Brian got down after us. He took the Monday morning off and then we got down to it in the afternoon.

“It is clear that when these guys are playing well, as a coach, you need to just keep them in their process, give them assistance, answer any questions, but making sure you are not introducing anything that would lead them in the wrong direction, which can be easy to do.

Eliot VanOtteren/Sea Island

“Brian, his caddie Scott, and I had some good preparation, playing nine holes in some really wet conditions. The golf course did play well for him. He is a very straight hitter, the driver can go further than others and he can challenge those bunkers and, of course his putting was excellent all week. He got a little template that I think got him rolling the ball really well on the greens. You will notice if you look back the putts were all going in at good speed and running right at the hole.

“He did make one little change by taking ice baths up at Renaissance and he continued that at Royal Liverpool. I think that had some mental and physical benefits. We saw some great mental control from being in that lead from Friday afternoon all the way to the last hole on Sunday. He was in the lead at the Open and he controlled his mind and his expectations and his process very, very well.

“By his own admission he will say he had to control his expectations at times, and that has been part of his training over the past three or four years. That has been something we have done collectively, not only with me but with his caddie and the other people that we talk to through the years — to control a fast-moving mind — it really has been a collaborative effort.

“To see him to be able to gather all that together and play the type of golf he is capable of in his mid-thirties is really special and he joins a special club as Open Champion and if he can continue to implement the processes that he has implemented and keep himself in good shape and control that busy mind and let the talent he clearly has as a player come out, it would be no surprise to see him have a very good next three to five years.”

The post Speaking with Justin Parsons about his journey from Northern Ireland and the UAE to the US and Open Championship glory with Brian Harman at Hoylake appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Finca Cortesin General Manager Francisco de Lancastre David takes us through the final preparations of hosting such a monumental event as the Solheim Cup, and we analyse the unlike-any-other-competition pressures of competing in the Ryder Cup in Rome.

Coach Justin Parsons takes us on his journey from Northern Ireland to the UAE and Open glory with Brian Harman, and Wyndham Clark explains what it takes to win a major.

All this and much, much more in the September 2023 edition of Golf Digest Middle East.

The issue is again free to our loyal audience. You can scroll through the ISSUU link provided here or download to your favourite device for later. Alternatively, pick up a copy at your favourite club. Whatever option you take, we hope you enjoy the read.

The post Get the September 2023 edition of Golf Digest Middle East FREE here today! appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

About a month ago, Brian Harman — a little lefty from Georgia that only golf gurus ever really paid attention to — hoisted the claret jug at Royal Liverpool after one of the most dominant major performances in recent memory. He proved he was a true mudder at Hoylake, outlasting sloppy conditions and sloppier galleries en route to the biggest win of his career.

That alone would be enough to make anyone’s year, but Harman wasn’t done there. He’s since been named to the 2023 US Ryder Cup team, currently sits eighth in the FedEx Cup standings heading into the Tour Championship and was even seen throwing some downright nasty junk (this is a compliment in baseball) at the Atlanta Braves game on Tuesday night. Check it out.

The Champion Golfer of the Year brought the heat ?@HarmanBrian threw out the first pitch at tonight's Atlanta Braves game.@Braves | @MLB pic.twitter.com/GfFF1F1WT9

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 22, 2023

It’s an extremely low bar, but we’re going to go out on a limb and call this the best first pitch in golf history. Watch how this thing snaps down and away at the last second. Filthy. You know he’s coming up and in for some sweet chin music on the next one.

Former Georgia bulldogs and current British Open champion Brian Harman, throwing out the first pitch here at the Braves game tonight

Thursday he tee’s it up at East Lake in Tour Championship pic.twitter.com/PMvqu4W5JH

— Zach Klein (@ZachKleinWSB) August 22, 2023

The best part of all this is Harman swings a golf club lefty and pitches righty. Apparently the guy can do it all. Does that include a comeback for the ages this week at East Lake? He’ll tee off on Thursday six shots back of leader Scottie Scheffler. That’s a pretty big mountain to climb, but given the year he’s having (and the smoke he’s throwing on the mound), we wouldn’t rule it out.

The post Brian Harman throws best first pitch in golf history at Atlanta Braves game, continues scorching hot streak appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The putting woes Lucas Glover endured for a decade have been well documented by now — and well, they should be given just how beautifully he’s played over the last two months highlighted by his back-to-back victories the last two weeks. Open champion Brian Harman was able to put a more compelling — and colourful—spin on Glover’s resurgence by paraphrasing a line from the film “The Shawshank Redemption.”

“To go through what he went through with his putter and to come out the other side, I think about like Andy Dufresne, crawling through the river and coming out clean the other side,” Harman said on Thursday at the BMW Championship where he shot 65 and grabbed a share of the first-round lead with Rory McIlroy. “I’m so proud of him. I’m so happy for him. Gosh, my wife and I were watching him win Wyndham [Championship, two weeks ago] and both of us are in tears watching it, and to follow it back up the next week, it’s awesome.”

“I think all of us … we all struggle from time to time, and Lucas with the putter, he struggled. It’s like … he was talking about putting left-handed,” added Harman, who plays left-handed. “I remember when I first moved down to St Simons [in Georgia], we’d go out and we’d play golf, and it was long before I had a tour card, and I was like: ‘I don’t know how I’m ever going to beat this guy.’ He was so good. He’s got such good hands. He was putting it so great. So he goes through that, and like I said, to come out the other side is just unreal.”

Everyone needs a friend like this

Co-leader @HarmanBrian talks about seeing @Lucas_Glover_ overcome his struggles. pic.twitter.com/dFxQkRKObV

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 17, 2023

Harman, who opened with a five-under 65 on the North Course at Olympia Fields, also had some choice words for an unnamed writer who in a recent story referred to Glover — who hit an even-par 70 for a share of 23rd on Thursday — as a “journeyman”. This was a different river, of, well, we’ll let him just say his piece.

“I read an article the other day that made me very angry. It called Lucas Glover a journeyman. It said, ‘journeyman Lucas Glover’, and I thought, what a ridiculous thing to say,” Harman said. “This guy has made I don’t know how many Tour Championships, won the US Open. He’s won six or seven times now. Lucas Glover is a world beater.”

He sure has been lately. Harman, the Champion Golfer of the Year, hasn’t been too bad, either.

The post Brian Harman shares perfect Shawshank analogy about Lucas Glover, admits tears while watching him win appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The claret jug owns a hallowed place in the annals of golf. It just doesn’t belong on Kelly Harman’s kitchen counter. But it appears that she has had to make allowances for domestic tranquility.

Kelly’s husband, Brian, who won the Open Championship last month at Royal Liverpool, has declared the kitchen counter the optimal place to display his major championship trophy. And he is not willing to negotiate.

“My wife has asked me to move it several times, and it’s like: ‘No, that’s a hard no, it’s going to stay right here,’” Harman said with a wide smile at the FedEx St Jude Championship, which will mark his first start since his impressive six-stroke victory in the year’s final major.

“I’ve caught myself walking by it looking at it, and be like: ‘Man, I still can’t believe it happened,’” he said. “I’m very grateful, very thankful. It was a very wild experience.”

Admitting that “life as a major champion is better than not”, Harman also has had to come to grips with the fact that wild experiences, at least for him, might be his new normal for a while.

He, of course, went home to St Simons Island, and was greeted to a hero’s welcome at the airport. That was new. Sure, the wife and kids have been there in the past, but the dozens who were there when he returned from England was a surprise. Turns out he was a little bleary-eyed after staying up all night with his manager, Jeremy Elliott, celebrating.

“Other than like my mom with some balloons [after] coming home from some junior tournament, no,” Harman said when asked if he’d ever gotten such a greeting before.

And speaking of airport greetings, Harman, 36, arrived on Monday night here only to find autograph seekers waiting for him. “How do they know?” he wondered, puzzled that they knew when he was getting in. “It’s a new experience, people kind of recognising me.

“I had a little chat with Scottie Scheffler yesterday,” Harman added. “He’s always so gracious. Just about how he’s dealt with … I’ve always enjoyed going out to dinner when I’m on the road by myself, just going to a hole-in-the-wall place and getting dinner, and it’s probably going to be a minute before I get to enjoy that again. There’s guys that have to deal with it to a much greater scale than I’ve had to. I’ve asked a few of them how they kind of handle it.”

Seems like he’s handling things just fine. To wit: the claret jug stays in the kitchen. Or wherever he wants it.

The post Proof ‘life as a major champion is better than not’ Brian Harman’s wife lets him leave claret jug on kitchen counter appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Brian Harman wasn’t treated kindly by the Royal Liverpool crowds during his Open Championship conquest. Luckily, the reception back home in the United States was more fitting for the Champion Golfer of the Year.

On Friday night, the PGA Tour posted a video of Harman returning to Georgia from his Open conquest, receiving a proper welcome for his proper performance at one of golf’s hardest tests.

The Champion Golfer of the Year has returned @HarmanBrian was welcomed by friends and fans when he arrived home in Sea Island. pic.twitter.com/MmpMSY2q0d

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 28, 2023

Harman is not in next week’s Wyndham Championship field, meaning the next time we’ll see the Open champ will be in the FedEx Cup playoffs. Judging by what we saw in the video, Harman will be enjoying his time from now until then.

The post Watch the hero’s welcome Brian Harman received upon bringing the claret jug home appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Within the scorecard holder which sits in my back pocket every time I play golf is a piece of paper. On that piece of paper are 13 different numbers, one for each club in my bag. It’s been there since last year, after I went through a relatively painstaking process of hitting 20 shots with each club, on a launch monitor, and averaging out the distances for every club in my bag (minus my putter, of course).

I’ve come to depend on it. I’d probably surrender half the clubs in my bag before that piece of paper. Knowing my exact yardages with every club has legitimately helped me — until last week.

Sneaking in a few rounds in the neighbouring links courses around Royal Liverpool with some fellow Golf Digest staffers (we call these “research rounds”), it immediately became clear how worthless that piece of paper was on those courses. For the first time since I jotted those numbers down, I played golf never bothering to consider it.

So much golf, from the PGA Tour et al. is a game of execution. Picking a spot, and trying to hit it to that number. Like throwing a dart at the centre of a dartboard, your success or failure starts and ends with you alone.

Links golf is different. A certain wind will send a driver across a fairway, rather than down it. Or float it high and away into nowhere. Links courses can turn a 9-iron into a 5-iron, and a 5-iron into the best sand wedge in your bag.

Mastering most golf courses means imposing your will as a golfer on to the layout. Links golf requires a meshing with what’s in front of you, in that current moment. Sometimes that means putting the driver away for good, as Tiger Woods did when he won at Royal Liverpool in 2006. Other times, it may mean calling upon a shot you may have never played before. Never does it require scribbling numbers on to a piece of paper.

“There are several different options to play each golf hole,” Brian Harman said of Royal Liverpool. “If you’re into the wind you can hit way more club and send it up in the air to try to stop it, or you can try to finesse something lower. I enjoy the variety of shots you have to hit.”

There’s a famous quote from the legendary British golf writer, Bernard Darwin, that the elements at Hoylake make Royal Liverpool a “breeder of great champions”. The history certainly backs it up, from Walter Hagan to Bobby Jones, to Peter Thompson, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

Brian Harman isn’t the name you’d expect to follow on that list. But standing in the rain as the 36 year-old hoisted the claret jug, Hoylake had done it again. Brian Harman was the man who forsook the formulas and mastered his feel instead. It’s the only way to conquer the elements of links golf. And in doing so Harman proved he is, undoubtedly, a great champion.

1. Good putting is boring putting

There was a lot of talk about putting at Royal Liverpool. Scottie Scheffler couldn’t make putts. Neither could Rory McIlroy, or Tommy Fleetwood. Brian Harman could, so he won.
Harman was, indeed, a tremendous putter at Royal Liverpool. But what, exactly, does that mean?
When most of us think about “good putting”, we think of draining long putts, and walking in 20-footers for birdie. Harman’s stats tell a different story. He gained 11.57 strokes on the green last week, but the longest putt he dropped all week was just over 30 feet. Rory McIlroy dropped two putts longer than that over those same 72 holes. So did Scheffler, and 29 other players.
Harman’s elite putting performance instead was predicated on making the boring, extraordinary. He didn’t have a three putt. He missed just one putt inside 10 feet, and none inside of five feet. When you do that, no one else can stand a chance.
“I expect to make those putts,” he said.
The problem the rest of us have is that we expect to make the wrong putts. Sure, it’s fun to drop 15 and 20 footers, but missing those doesn’t really matter, in the scheme of things. Making more of those putts five and 10 feet. Missing those are the killer of good rounds, and the key to avoiding bad ones.
Good putting doesn’t mean dropping bombs. It means making lots of little ones.

Travis Smyth. The Open Twitter

2. Know how to ditch spin in a hurry

Every time a golfer hits a ball, it flies into the air with backspin. It’s backspin that keeps the ball in the air. Of course, that’s not what you want when the wind starts gusting, as it did early during Open Championship week.
Killing lots of spin in a hurry strikes me as a pretty essential skill, for all golfers. This week, most pros I talked to said they generally settle on a combination of taking more club, swinging softer, and teeing the ball slightly higher (the ball being propped up in the rough has the same effect).
“When you’re trying to hit a low one, you are coming in quite steep. It’s easier off a tee, so you’re not catching the ground instantly at impact, which will create spin, which into the wind you don’t want to do,” said Travis Smyth after his hole-in-one on the 17th hole. “I took an extra club and chipped it.”
Simple enough, and something to keep in mind the next time you find yourself facing a stiff breeze.

3. Distance varies way more than you think

Of course, reducing your spin only mitigates the effects of an into wind shot. Ultimately, if you’re into wind, the ball is going to go shorter. Same with if it’s raining. Watching the pros slog it out on Sunday made me realise that the rest of us have a woeful under-appreciation for how much the rain, or wind, will affect our shots.
The reality is a player could be capable of hitting it 320 yards one day, but put that same player in certain elements, and they may struggle to crack 250 yards — as Rory McIlroy proved.

Rory's drive on the first hole in calm weather yesterday:

316 yards, 132 yards in

Rory's drive on the first hole in pouring rain today:

250 yards, 208 yards in pic.twitter.com/WMeOLASphr

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) July 23, 2023

“If it’s raining a little heavier, an iron could easily go 20 yards shorter,” Sepp Straka, who finished T-2.
Sure, into the wind, the rest of us will take an extra club. Maybe two. Really, there should be time when we take five extra clubs, or expect a 70-yard decrease on a given drive. It’s uncomfortable to think about, but it’s half the battle when playing in the elements. And it’s something pros don’t think twice about.

4. It’s the external factors that kill you

If you’ve noticed so far, a lot of the things I learnt have to do with external factors. All the stuff that’s out there. There are lots of things out there, especially during Opens, and it’s easy to let them screw us up.
Even for pros.
For Emiliano Grillo, it was the wind on the driving range. It was blowing left-to-right most days. Perfect to counteract his draw. Then he stands up on the second hole, and for the first time, finds the wind blowing right-to-left toward out of bounds. That baby draw which was flying straight on the range is about to turn into a hook.
“It’s so hard to make the switch,” he said. “Standing on the second hole, I bailed out right both days. I probably hit my ball 100 yards right.”
For Max Homa, it was the hassle of moving everything around in the rain.
“The umbrella to the glove to the yardage book to the umbrella, it just gets tiring holding the dang thing and shuffling it around,” he said after I asked him the most difficult part of playing in the rain. “You just feel very out of sorts. It takes a few holes to get going.”
Yet both those players had their best Open Championship finish ever. As did Ben An, who says it was always unlucky bounces that would often send his rounds into a mental, downhill spiral. He said things only started to change recently, when he accepted those will happen and there’s nothing he’ll be able to do about it. The central skill in golf isn’t avoiding them altogether, but sucking them up and moving on when they do happen.
“I realised I usually get beaten by the golf course, not by other players,” he says. “I still have to work very hard on it, but I don’t lose my mind as much as I did before … It’s not perfect, but you have to learn to let it go, like what are you going to do next.”

5. Go short or long of trouble, but never around

The third hole is a quirky layout where an old racetrack used to be. A wall signifying out of bounds cuts in from the right at about 250 yards. During the previous two Opens at Royal Liverpool, players would hit a no-brainer iron miles short of it. This year, for the first time, players had introduced a third strategy: Sending a driver over the out of bounds, over the fairway, into the rough. Amateur Christo Lamprecht, who won the silver medal for low amateur after leading through 18 hole, opted for that strategy on day one. He birdied the hole.

 

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“It makes sense,” Bryson DeChambeau says. “You can take the OB out of play every time that way.”
While some players opted for ‘over it’ strategy the first two days, they abandoned it once the weekend rain came. But this was an interesting insight how they think about avoiding absolute, no-go areas like out of bounds: When trying to avoid a hazard, you need to either hit something short that has no chance of going into the hazard long, or something so long that it has no chance of catching the hazard short. Don’t flirt with it, and don’t try going around it.
On a slightly separate note, many proponents of a golf ball rollback would point to something like this as evidence the golf ball does need to get rolled back. I’m not unconvinced by that argument, but in this case, I’m just not sure that would tell the entire story.
Being able to go over everything does give this hole different shot options, which is the guiding principle for so much of the rollback debate. And because that ‘go for it’ option only requires a carry of about 260 yards, it’s a feat most long hitters could accomplish even with a persimmon driver — especially with the right wind.
Rather, this strategy exists now and not before because golfers in 2023 understand the statistical value of being in the rough, if it means being closer to the hole.
“There is typically something bad in play, constantly, so you might as well get it as close to the hole as you can,” says Scott Fawcett, the founder of Decade Golf. “Especially in major championship golf.”
Intentionally trying to hit your ball in the rough is simply not an idea which made sense until we had data that proved why it can. Wherever you may land on the rollback debate, that genie isn’t going back in the bottle.

6. Fully commit to a feeling that works

As often happens with these articles, I’m quickly approaching my word limit, so a quick note on how much I love that Adrian Otegui put this rehearsal practice backswing move into play because he liked the feeling of it in a practice round. He noticed his backswing getting too short. This helped him commit to the feeling of a full turn, in the final seconds it was time to swing.

Instead of waggles, Adrián Otaegui makes a full backswing while he’s over the ball. Then stops, resets, and swings.

“It’s new. It’s a feeling I had in practice rounds. I quite like the feeling, used it on the driving range, then introduced it into my routine.”

Practice vs real pic.twitter.com/QEBWIDHnLd

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) July 21, 2023

A good reminder, that it doesn’t matter how something looks if it helps your swing feels.

7. Trust the process

I find it increasingly weird how, whenever Rory McIlroy gets into major contention and doesn’t win, pundits immediately reach for some mental platitude. It’s always some variation of Rory not being able to handle the pressure, or wanting it too much, or not wanting it enough, or lacking the killer instinct.
But what, exactly, does that mean?
Rory isn’t standing over a golf ball, thinking about how much making this putt would mean to him. None of these guys are, and they shouldn’t be, either. They may feel nervous, but that’s natural and normal. Even when they feel the nerves, they’re not trying to do anything different. “Process” was the word Rory McIlroy kept returning to during his Hoylake victory in 2014. It’s the same process he’s focusing on in 2023.
The truth is, the whole ‘he can’t handle the heat’ mental stuff is just a thing that people say who don’t want to look at the real reasons, so they make up catchy ones instead.
As far as I can see it, in Rory’s case, he’s a very, very good player (obviously). The key reason McIlroy is so good is because of his golf swing. He’s not the biggest guy, but he can hit his ball enormous distances because of how dynamic his golf swing is. But that dynamism also leads to occasional streaky ball-striking patches, especially off the tee. That’s what we saw during the early part of this season. That’s why to some outsiders, Rory can run hot and cold from round to round. It’s worth the trade.
Other times, he’ll struggle with consistent contact on his putting — that’s what happened on Saturday. Every player has different tendencies which pop up from time to time. This is Rory’s.

 

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Occasionally Rory also has a tendency, I think, to play too safe at certain times. Some variation of all of the above can explain most of McIlroy’s recent major near-misses.
The only way to win majors in the modern era is to fire on all cylinders. The fields are just too deep not to, as Brian Harman proved this week. Rory is one of the few exceptions: A player good enough to get himself into contention, even when he’s not firing on all cylinders. Just as Jack Nicklaus did, whose record doesn’t just include 18 major wins, but 19 other major top threes.
It’s not a bad thing, so save the mental game platitudes about Rory. Any minute now things will align, and Rory will get his major. Then many more after that.

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