Harold Varner III hits his tee shot on Thursday on the fifteenth gap at TPC Sawgrass.
Getty Photographs
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The rationale you want HV3 — how will you not just like the dude? — is that he completed his lengthy day’s journey to 69, right here within the first spherical of the Gamers Championship, with a triple bogey and a bogey and nonetheless he exhibited his customary good cheer.
Your thoughts instantly went to that muggy Lengthy Island Sunday — mid-Might, 2019 PGA Championship, Bethpage Black — when Harold Varner III went off with Brooks Koepka within the last day’s last twosome. Koepka gained. Varner signed for 80.
After which he signed for followers, talked to reporters and cooled his jets. He knew the solar would rise come morn. He knew his T36 paycheck for $48,000 was going to clear.
No matter occurs in rounds 2 and three and 4 (if he will get that far) right here on the Gamers, it’s all good. It truly is.
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Varner is attempting to play his means into the Masters, a event he’s by no means performed in After all he desires to play within the Masters, this yr or any yr. But when he doesn’t, he doesn’t.
Varner has had the prospect to choose the mind of two of his {golfing} idols, Tiger Woods, and his sporting idol, Michael Jordan. He wears MJ-branded garments from his hat to his sneakers. However he doesn’t have both man’s smoldering depth.
“Powerful sport, isn’t it?” a reporter mentioned to Varner when he got here in, attempting to melt the blow.
No softener wanted.
“It’s a sport,” Varner mentioned. “That’s why we play it. Nobody goes to die on the market.”
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Varner, 31, gained final month in Saudi Arabia, the PIF Saudi Worldwide, an Asian Tour occasion. He made a bomb on the final for an eagle and a one-shot win over Bubba Watson. He has not gained on the PGA Tour. As a result of he gained in Saudi Arabia, there was hypothesis that he can be recruited to affix the golf league reportedly being deliberate by Greg Norman and funded by the Saudi ruling class.
“My title went proper to the highest of the checklist, and I do need to commend [PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan] for sitting down and speaking to me and being completely open about,” Varner mentioned. It wasn’t completely clear what he meant, however the message he conveyed is that his fealty is to the PGA Tour.
On the par-3 seventeenth, probably the most either-or par-3 on the PGA Tour, Varner mentioned he was debating between a wedge with some oomph or taking one thing off a 9-iron. The pin was in the course of the inexperienced, towards the again. The inexperienced was tender from the day’s heavy rains. Varner hit it proper right into a slope, and, as laborious, well-hit wedges are likely to do, it spun like loopy — again into the water. You are taking one thing off a 9, the shot is available in extra quietly. No person ever accused Varner of being a {golfing} artist. He swings laborious and takes massive divots. Varner’s sand wedge from the drop zone virtually spun off the inexperienced, too. He wanted three extra photographs to gap out.
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On 18, his 120-yard method shot, after chipping out after a wayward drive, spun again 30 or so ft.
“I really feel like I’m getting higher,” Varner mentioned. “It’s simply so laborious to win.”
The sensation you get from the person actually is that this: Life’s good.
On his first shot of the day, Varner was about 5 seconds away from declaring his ball misplaced.
“The good factor that occurred right this moment was Will Zalatoris’ caddie [Ryan Goble] discovered my ball on the primary gap, like 5 seconds left earlier than I had to return to the tee,” he mentioned. “He stepped on it. It may have been completely totally different. So I’m tremendous lucky.”
Yep.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your feedback at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
