Georgia coach Kirby Smart had a special visitor on Monday. It was former Bulldog and reigning “champion golfer of the year” Brian Harman.
Harman is in Atlanta this week to compete in the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club. But he made a side trip to his alma mater in Athens Monday and paid a visit to Smart in his office at the Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall football complex.
“Yeah, I got to spend the afternoon in Athens,” Harman said. “I took a tour of the football facility, an incredibly impressive place. I hadn’t been back to Athens since 2016, so it was nice to go there, reminisce, and remember some stuff from college. Just super proud of the way that Kirby Smart’s handling that football team.”
Accompanying Harman on his visit was the Claret Jug Harman picked up last month when he won The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in England. That’s a lot of hardware between Harman’s Claret Jug and Georgia’s back-to-back national championship trophies.
“I got to take a picture with the jug,” Smart said proudly Monday evening shortly before speaking at the Touchdown Club of Athens. “I didn’t drink anything out of it. (Harman) got to sit in a team meeting, so it was cool. I wanted to introduce him to the team, but I was afraid nobody would know who he was.”
Harman drew little attention from the room full of more than 100 Georgia football players player and dozens of staffers.
“I know he resonated with our staff, because we all love him and we know he’s a Dawg,” Smart said.
Harman also threw out the first pitch before the Braves played the Mets Tuesday night at Truist Park.
“Yeah, I grew up watching the Braves,” Harman said. “It’s kind of all we ever watched on TV growing up, so really excited to do that. Threw it from the rubber, hit the catcher’s mitt, so didn’t fall, didn’t make Sportscenter Not Top 10, so very excited about that.”
Fan control not easy
An on-course incident at last week’s BMW Championship brought to the forefront the issue of gambling and fan interaction.
A fan yelled at both Max Homa and Chris Kirk to miss putts last weekend – reportedly over a $3 bet. The fan was ejected, according to PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.
“I feel like we hear it every single round,” Jon Rahm said this week from the Tour Championship. “That happens way more often than you guys may hear. I mean, it’s very, very present.
“In golf, spectators are very close, and even if they’re not directly talking to you, they’re close enough to where if they say to their buddy, ‘I bet you 10 bucks he’s going to miss it,’ you hear it.”
Controlling fans and their behavior on a golf course is not easy.
“You know, in a game like this where you’re allowed to have your favorites, but it’s not a team aspect, right, it’s not a home team against a visiting team, I think the tour maybe should look into it because you don’t want it to get out of hand, right?” Rahm said. “It’s very easy, very, very easy in golf if you want to affect somebody. You’re so close, you can yell at the wrong time, and it’s very easy for that to happen.
“So I think they could look into it, but at the same time, it would be extremely difficult for the tour to somehow control the 50,000 people scattered around the golf course, right? So it’s a complicated subject. You don’t want it to get out of control, but you also want to have the fans to have the experience they want to have.”
Rory McIlroy echoed Rahm’s thoughts that it’s easy to hear spectators who want to inject themselves into the action.
“I think for me my biggest pet peeve is when you’re reading a putt and someone that’s been sitting there all day is like, it doesn’t break as much as you think or whatever,” McIlroy said. “Like, you know, to me, I just think, like, shut up and don’t be a part of the show, just enjoy watching the golf, right?
“But I wouldn’t say that’s to do with gambling, per se, but, yeah, if I was here as a fan, I just want to go out and try to watch the best players in the world and have a good time doing that.”
Getting over a bogey
Xander Schauffele claimed the sixth and final automatic spot on the Ryder Cup team on Sunday at the BMW Championship.
He wasn’t happy.
But for good reason.
“I just bogeyed my last hole from like 150 yards with a pitching wedge,” Schauffele said Tuesday before the Tour Championship. “And the pin was in a bowl. Like, I was, I wasn’t super excited, to be completely honest. I was hot and just (ticked) off. So once I did the (post-round) interview and everything I felt a little bit better. Then as I sat down, I felt a little better. Then as I thought about it, I started to feel better. But like right when it happened, they told me and I was kind of just like sick, you know what I mean. Like, that’s great. But once I was able to talk about it and think beyond my bogey that I just made and get over myself I was happy.”
Timing is everything.
Scottie Scheffler and Wyndham Clark long ago clinched their automatic spots on the team that will compete in Rome next month. Brian Harman, Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa and Schauffele clinched their spots last week. Schauffele’s finish bumped Brooks Koepka from an automatic spot by just 29 points.
U.S. captain Zach Johnson will pick six more picks following the Tour Championship.
-Staff writer Chip Towers contributed to this report.
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