ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Brian Harman is enjoying sleeping in his own bed this week at the RSM Classic. He’s hosting his parents and has his caddie, Scott Tway, in his guest house, and every night they’ve been firing up the grill.
“We had elk tenderloin two nights ago, we had tomahawk pork chops and then we had beef tenderloin last night, so we’re eating well,” Harman said. “We’re dialing it back tonight. Chicken breasts.”
About the only thing better than his home cooking this week is his ballstriking. Harman, 32, hit all 18 greens at Sea Island’s Seaside Course in the second round en route to shooting 4-under 66 and finishing T-11 and five shots back of leader Tyler Duncan. It marked the second time in his career that he hasn’t missed a green in regulation.
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“Anytime you don’t have to chip, it’s a fun day,” Harman said. “My ballstriking is as good as it has ever been, probably even better than when I was 20th in the world. I just have to get my putting back to where it was.”
It’s been a challenging year for Harman, who reached No. 20 in the world in February 2018 but slipped to No. 123 entering the RSM. He needed a hot streak late in the season to make the FedEx Cup Playoffs for the eighth straight year. Harman says he suffered from mental fatigue and blamed the Tour’s wraparound schedule – “it’s hard not to think about it,” he said – for the “crippling anxiety” of trying to turn his season around.
“We play so much golf now that it’s impossible to be mentally engaged for a year straight. You need to be able to build in breaks so it is always fresh and you’re not just going through the motions,” Harman said. “I want to take time off until I miss it and I want to come back and work again. With the wraparound schedule you have to be resilient, you have to be tough and I didn’t feel very tough at the beginning of the season.”
Harman turned the corner with a T-6 finish at The Travelers in June, and a few weeks later at the 3M Championship he had a heart to heart with himself before the final round.
“I should be trying to win this golf tournament, not worrying about what’s going to happen. So, I just made the choice that day that whatever happened, I was going to act like I had been there before,” he said.
Harman ended the 2018-19 season with four top 10s in his last seven events. When he didn’t advance past the first FedEx Cup playoff event, Harman had a month-long layoff, which was a blessing in disguise.
“That was my first month off, continuous month off in three years,” Harman said. “Whereas like my rookie year, you could take three or four months off and you could show up in Hawaii and be fresh and ready to go. It’s just a different dynamic. I think it’s probably why the Tour’s getting younger, just because things are kind of ramped up.”
Harman showed no rust after his extended time off, notching a T-3 finish at A Tribute to Military at The Greenbrier in the Tour’s season-opening event.
“That just kind of gives me a little freedom to know that I can take some time off when I need to try to avoid getting too bogged down and too, you know, just golf, golf, golf,” he said.
Harman enters the weekend at the RSM Classic in striking distance, four strokes off the pace set by 36-hole leader Tyler Duncan as he seeks his first win since the 2018 Wells Fargo Championship. In seven previous starts, Harman’s best finish at his home game is a T-4 in 2018, but he’s also missed the cut twice.
“It used to kind of bug me a little bit,” he said of playing at Sea Island, “it’s kind of like I wanted to play well so badly, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve just kind of embraced it. It’s just a fun week, man. Let’s have fun, let’s have a good time. It seems to be helping a little bit.”
And what would it mean to win the RSM Classic?
“It would mean the world, man,” he said. “All of them are important. This one would be really special.”
