For the first time since the 2021 Travelers Championship, Harris English is a PGA Tour winner. He survived blustery conditions at Torrey Pines’ South Course on Saturday to take home the Farmers Insurance Open title, and this time he didn’t need eight playoff holes.
Considering recent form and tournament history, this win came a bit out of left field for English. He missed the cut at the Sony Open in Hawaii and American Express to open the season and hadn’t finished inside the top 60 of this tournament since 2018. He did, however, lose in a playoff to Jason Day at this event 10 years ago. A little redemption for the Georgia Bulldog.
Entering the final round at 9 under, English was quickly 2 over through five holes after bogeys on Nos. 1 and 5. However, he got one shot back with a circle on the par-5 sixth after hitting a 46-yard pitch to five feet. He settled in from that point on, making 12 straight pars to end his day one shot clear of Sam Stevens.
For the week, English was seventh in Strokes Gained: Approach and third in SG: Putting, usually a pretty good recipe to contend.
Stevens, who entered the final round at 3 under and six shots back of the lead, fired a day-best 4-under 68 despite the heavy winds. He was the clubhouse leader at 7 under for around an hour before English bested him by a shot. After beginning the week at 107th in the FedEx Cup, Stevens is projected to move to 11th with his solo-second finish.
“Yeah, I got off to a really good start, made a couple nice birdies in the first three holes and then made a nice long putt on 7 to get to 3 under,” Stevens said. “When I got up to the 8th 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. I was like all right, now we’re in this thing.
“Hit a few good shots. Really the last 10 holes or so I didn’t drive the ball that well, which is normally my strength, but just kind of scrambled and took advantage of a couple opportunities. Made a terrible bogey on 13, but that happens sometimes.”
Despite coming up short on the leaderboard, Stevens did enough to earn a spot in next week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the Tour’s second signature event of the season.
“Obviously there’s a big opportunity there,” he said. “They have a lot of points and we won’t get into the amount of points that the Signature Events have, but take advantage of the opportunity hopefully and keep playing well. You know, each event kind of is individual, so hopefully if I get into the event next week I can reset and get hot early and stay hot.”
To round out the top five, Andrew Novak finished solo third at 6 under, while Sungjae Im and Kris Ventura tied for fourth at 5 under.
Next week, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 3 Rory McIlroy are set to make their first Tour starts of the year at Pebble Beach.
