Harris English celebrates a victory with his 1½-year-old daughter for the first time

The job of weatherman in La Jolla, California, tends to be fairly predictable given that the sun is always shining and the sky is always blue. That is, it seems, unless the PGA Tour comes to town for the annual Farmers Insurance Open.

When Harris English checked the weather for the final round at Torrey Pines Golf Course, he never blinked at the forecast of high winds and tough conditions. On a day when several players were blown away by gusts up to 25 miles per hour, English entered Saturday’s final round with a one-shot lead and an attitude that his game was made for an occasion that wasn’t designed to be, as he put it, “a dart show or a putting contest.” To English, Torrey’s South Course, isn’t a place that the winner can play checkers; you have to “play chess.”

“I knew it was going to be a tough day today, I love that,” he said. “I love this golf course when it plays really tough. As a leader coming in the final round, you kind of like that, that it's going to be a grind.”

And grind he did to hold off runner-up Sam Stevens by one stroke. On a day when three players recorded scores of 79, and two more shot 80 and 81, English survived blustery conditions to post 1-over 73 in the final round, good for 8-under 280 for the week and picked up his fifth career PGA Tour title and first win since the 2021 Travelers Championship.

English won twice in 2021, was a member of the winning U.S. Ryder Cup team and rose as high as No. 10 in the world. But the 35-year-old former Georgia Bulldog had surgery in February 2022 to repair a torn labrum in his right hip. He returned to the Tour four months later, but anyone who watched him tumble outside the top 50 in the world could see that it took more than a year to fully recover.

English was off to a slow start this season in his first two tournaments, but he sensed he was on the verge of a breakthrough. For the week, English ranked seventh in Strokes Gained: Approach and third in SG: Putting, a dependable recipe for success. But he hit just four fairways and nine greens in the final round, relying on his stellar scrambling, especially on the back nine.

English, who finished with birdies on his final three holes on Friday to assume the 54-hole lead, dropped two shots quickly after bogeys on Nos. 1 and 5 as Torrey continued to bare its teeth. For the week, the South Course played to an average of 73.6. However, English grabbed one shot back with a birdie on the par-5 sixth after pitching from 46 yards to five feet. He kept a clean card from there, making 12 straight pars and becoming just the third player in tournament history to record an over-par final round and go on to win, something previously done by John Daly in 2004 (75) and Jack Nicklaus in 1969 (73).

Stevens, who entered the final round at 3 under and six shots back of the lead, fired a 4-under 68, the low round of the day.

"When I got up to the eighth green there was a big leaderboard there and I looked and I saw that Harris was either even or 1 over at that point and the lead was at 8 under, so I was only a couple back,” Stevens said. “I was like all right, now we're in this thing.”

Andrew Novak, who held the early lead at 9 under after making a downhill 54-foot birdie putt at the fifth, finished solo third at 6 under, while Sungjae Im and Kris Ventura tied for fourth at 5 under.

“He played it perfectly,” Novak said of English’s execution down the stretch. “When he was not in prime position off the tee, he was getting himself back in position. He was making the putts he needed to make, he was hitting a lot of good wedge shots and he did what you have to do around here. He went out there and earned it.”

English tasted victory for the first time in a span of 1,308 days, and enjoyed celebrating his success with his 1½ – year-old daughter, Emilia, for the first time.

“You think it would get easier being in this position a lot, then winning four times out here,” English said, “but it never gets easier.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Harris English celebrates with 1½-year-old daughter for the first time