Brian Harman and John Daley Are Winners

Yesterday, left-hander Brian Harman won the Wells Fargo Championship in Wilmington, North Carolina. It was his second win on the PGA Tour. (His first win was the 2014 John Deere Classic.) Harman had to make a 28-foot putt on the last hole to edge out superstar Dustin Johnson and Pat Perez by one stroke.

It was Johnson’s first time back on Tour since the Masters, in which he spent six weeks nursing his back to health. At the Masters, the day before the tournament, long-hitting Dustin had a freak accident in which he fell while walking down some stairs in his stocking feet. As the #1 player in the world and tournament favorite, he had to withdraw from the Masters. If Johnson would have won yesterday, it would have been four wins on Tour in succession, which would have tied a record held by a few players in the history of the Tour.

The PGA Tour returned to Wilmington last week after having been absent from that venue for about 65 years or more. During the 1960s, we used to play the Azalea Open in Wilmington. It’s been so long ago, I don’t remember much about it except for all those beautifully-colored azalea bushes. OH, it’s tough getting old!

Hats off to long-hitting, flamboyant, fan-favorite, 51-year old John Daley yesterday as well. He won the Insperity Invitational at The Woodlands Country Club in a suburb of my old hometown of Houston, Texas. It was his first win on the Champions Tour. The regular PGA Tour used to play at The Woodlands for many years. Daley, a two-time major winner, had not won a PGA Tour tournament since 2004.

Daley was strutting patrioticly by wearing pants that looked like they were made from an American flag. But he looked anything but courageous as he limped into the clubhouse with bogies on the final three holes to survive winning by two strokes.

Daley is good for the Champions Tour as long as he stays out of trouble. And I don’t mean only golfing his ball down the straight-and-narrow. His shaky reputation follows him. But he sure is fun to watch drive a golf ball, with that long backswing. And daily, blond John is never short on words.