Harris
English

I t’s a recurring theme for elite athletes describing their craft. The first step towards achieving greatness comes through visualizing great feats play out in your mind. For Harris English, now a ten-year veteran on the PGA Tour, this visualization is paramount to what he does.

“What I love about this game is that the ball can do an infinite number of things,” he says. “I’ve practiced pretty much every single shot and still every time I go to the course, I have a little different lie, a little different wind. I love being able to draw up shots in my mind.”

And winning is nothing new for Harris English. From junior golf to state titles in high school to four-time All-America honors at the University of Georgia, accolades were almost automatic during his early career.

His upward trajectory continued without a hitch as he began competing on the bigger stage. He won a Nationwide Tour event while still an amateur and then qualified for the PGA Tour on his first try. In 2013, his second season on Tour, he won two events.

With his natural ball-striking ability and consistently unfazed demeanor, he seemed certain to continue steadily climbing the ladder. It was a dream start to his career.

But then things tapered off.

Missed cuts and higher scores became regular, invitations to events began to dwindle, and he gradually slid all the way down to 369th in the Official World Golf Ranking. His Tour status was no longer guaranteed. It was a long fall, one that might have knocked many out of the professional game entirely.

“I questioned myself a lot,” English says. “Was I good enough to stay at the top? Was I good enough to keep up with all these other young guys? I could have easily given up the game, but I wanted to get better, and I knew I had it in me.”

In his early career, although impressive performances were regular, English didn’t exactly grapple with why they kept happening. It was mostly just instinct, and it was all he needed at that point to keep powering through. That’s what made the turnaround such a challenge.

A reserved player who prefers to dig in and gut it out, he learned to lean on his team and let them help with some of the heavy lifting.

“I’d never had much adversity in my golf game,” he says. “I didn’t know what to do, but I had some great guys around me to help me spin it into a positive plan. I had to get out of my own way.”

As a young kid on tour, English was, as his swing coach, Justin Parsons, describes it, prone to tinkering. And Parsons recognized that as soon as they began working together at their home base in Sea Island, Georgia.

“It was clear that he tried an awful lot of things—a lot of different systems, some different coaches,” Parsons says. “There was a lot of different information going into the master computer, if you like. That's one of the pitfalls the best professionals can fall into if they don’t perform very well for a period of time.”

English recognized the same about himself. As an impressionable young man on Tour, he looked to the best in the game to find inspiration, but in doing so began straying from the path that had brought him so far.

“I was trying to find the next greatest instructor, to try to swing the club like Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy or Jason Day,” English says. “I just needed to swing the club like Harris English, like a better version of myself.”

Parsons helped him get him back to the clean slate he was searching for. “What I’ve found in Justin is to have confidence in what I’ve had since I was four or five years old, picking up the game at Sunset Country Club,” English says.

And so did his caddie, Eric Larson, a longtime personality on Tour.

“Everybody knows Big E,” English says. “He’s such a good guy. He would literally give you the shirt off his back. I definitely feel that out on the course.”

As a man who’s seen peaks and valleys in his own life, Larson is well-acquainted with starting over. English knew he could count on him to get his mind right on the course.

“Your caddie becomes one of your best friends,” English mentions. “You go through every kind of emotion with them. I couldn’t pick a better one to have right now. He knows that the next shot’s the most important one; the next shot can be the momentum that turns you around. So he’s always looking ahead.”

When it comes to his clubs, English has a long-standing relationship with a trusted partner. He values consistency and simplicity in his tools of the trade.

“I’ve been playing Ping golf clubs for a long time and I have the utmost faith that the clubs are going to perform,” he says. “If I can have my equipment the exact same every single day, that’s one less thing that I have to worry about. It’s all on me. It’s all how I’m feeling, how my body’s feeling, how I’m swinging that day. I take my golf clubs very seriously. I trust the guys that work on my clubs.”

With a finely-tuned network surrounding him, English began the self-examination he needed to make the next big push. Closing out the 2019 season, he finished in the top ten in four out of his last six events. Momentum was building.

And then, well, 2020. Events were cancelled, the season was up in the air, and this time it was entirely out of English’s control. But he used his time off the road to keep improving.

When the season restarted, English was dialed-in. True to form, he continued quietly stacking up results week after week. He finished the 2020 season with six top-10 finishes in 20 events, including a solo-fourth at the U.S. Open. With his back against the wall, he was climbing his way back to the promised land.

And it culminated with the second event of the 2021 season—the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Kapalua, Hawaii. Leading after each of the first three rounds, English was riding high going into the final day. Even par at the turn, he had to put his foot on the gas through the back nine to stay in contention.

So he did, birdieing five of his last nine holes. His flushed 3-iron approach shot on the par-5 18th, one of the most difficult closing holes on Tour, was an instant addition to his highlight reel. An ensuing two-putt for birdie put him in a playoff with Joaquin Niemann. He birdied 18 again in the playoff to clinch the title, his first in eight years.

Call it a comeback, a renaissance, or a level-set—the return of Harris English did not stem from a newfound ability, or some sort of magical swing change. It wasn’t a different mentality, either. As much as he’d prefer to avoid the spotlight in his personal life, he’s never shied away from pressure situations in sport.

“I loved having the ball at the last minute of the game when I was playing basketball, and it’s the same with golf,” he says. “Everything resting on you, do or die, either make birdie or go home.”

For English, wins, and positive moments, are always shared, between himself, his caddie, his swing coach and his wife, Helen Marie. This respect for the team now has him reaching for the next benchmark in his career: being selected for the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams. And it goes without saying that for a man raised in Moultrie, Georgia, the ultimate personal goal resides just a few hours up the road from his hometown—a fabled green jacket in Augusta.

Countless Tour professionals go through the type of struggles that English has encountered over the past few years, even if we don’t always hear about them. It takes a special character to push back through to the other side.

These experiences have strengthened his resolve, as painful as they must have been at the time. He’s still the same laid-back character he’s always been, but there’s a steely focus beneath his demeanor.

Harris English 2.0 appreciates what it took to get his second shot. It won’t pass him by this time.

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