Brian Harman: Boos from fans fired me up to become Open champion

Brian Harman reckons boos from the crowd on the first tee fired him up to land his maiden major win with a stunning six-shot success in the 151st Open at Royal Liverpool.

American Brian Harman shows off the Claret Jug after his stunning six-shot success in the 151st Open. Picture: Tom Russo/The Scotsman.

The 36-year-old American overcame a shaky start for the second day running at the Hoylake venue to win comfortably after challenges from Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Tommy Fleetwood all fizzled out in appalling conditions.

Harman picked up a record $3 million, climbed to tenth in the world rankings and is now set to make his Ryder Cup debut in Rome in September.

“Yeah, I heard them,” said the left-hander of those boos as he set out defending a five-shot overnight lead. “You had Fleetwood and Rory making a run. It's fine. Everybody has got their team they're rooting for. But, if they wanted me to not play well they should have been really nice to me.”

The Georgia man had also been galvanised by a shout from someone in the crowd in Saturday’s third round on the Wirral. “After I made the second bogey yesterday, a guy said, ‘Harman, you don't have the stones for this’. That helped a lot. It helped snap me back into 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 is going to be good.”

Harman had only 106 putts over the four rounds - the least by an Open winner in the last 20 years - as he joined Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, Arnold Palmer, Johnny Miller and Tiger Woods on the list of Americans to win the game’s oldest major by six shots or more.

“A couple weeks ago, I bought a new tractor for my hunting place, so I'll get home and I'll be on the tractor mowing grass in the next few weeks, so I'm excited about that,” said Harman of how he planned to celebrate his victory.

It came after he’d been in contention in the Genesis Scottish Open and he admitted: “I think coming over for that helped a lot getting ready and putting all my eggs in the basket of playing well here.”