In considering LIV Golf’s polarizing offer, Harold Varner III had seen too much to lie
By Kent Babb April 5, 2023 at 8:42 a.m. PT
CHARLOTTE — One of these days, Harold William Varner IV’s father will have some unusual questions to answer. For one, why does their house have a shoe room? It’s ostensibly a home office, with a computer and printer on a desk at its center. But the boy’s parents rarely use the computer or print anything or sit at the desk, which is buried in papers, folders and the various collectible flotsam his daddy accumulates from his job. Somewhere in the pile is an invitation to play in this week’s Masters, which, considering golf’s civil war, should be interesting. On the floor there’s a walking boot his dad hates but sometimes has to wear anyway, three golf bags, a table that displays two footballs and a state trooper’s hat that obscures the small metal trophy that changed everything. “That’s Saudi. I don’t give a f---,” Harold William Varner III says as his 16-month-old son, whom he and wife Amanda call Liam, does pre-bedtime laps around the desk. Fourteen months ago, Varner drained a 92-foot eagle putt from the fringe of the 18th green to win the Saudi International, a marquee event on the Asian Tour and the bigger of Varner’s two professional wins. “I’m not really into trophies.”
He is, though, very much into premium sneakers. At least 800 pairs, most of them Air Jordans, fill the clear display containers lining the walls. Others are in unopened boxes or in the room’s crawl space. Jordan Brand sponsors Varner and keeps sending shipments, he says, months after he announced he was leaving the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf, the renegade circuit financed by the Saudi Arabian government.
Perhaps Liam will ask about that someday, too. Everyone else has, and his father’s answers have been notable for their unvarnished honesty: Yes, he did it for the money. “I play golf so I can change the direction of my family’s life,” says Varner, 32. “And that’s it. No other reason.” When he joined LIV in August, he says, its public relations apparatus sent Varner the same talking points it sent other players. He ignored them. Instead, he posted on Instagram that it was “simply too good of a financial breakthrough,” a chance for a Black man from rural North Carolina to acquire generational wealth. In other words, Harold III made a decision that factored in the experiences of Harold I and Harold II and saw a one-time opportunity to change the math for Harold IV, a possible Harold V and beyond. So what about LIV chief executive Greg Norman’s declaration that players’ motivation to defect from the PGA Tour expands beyond greed? That golf can be an instrument of global diplomacy and that LIV players wish to grow the game? “They’re full of s---; they’re growing their pockets,” Varner says. “I tell them all the time, all of them: ‘You didn’t come here to f---ing grow the f---ing game.’ ”
When it gets wet, windy and cold, the guys who hit the center of the clubface consistently have a huge advantage. Spieth will win another one someday, buts it has to be be firm and fast conditions for him. Anyone can get up and down when it’s soft.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/04/05/harold-varner-iii-liv-golf-masters/
‘It’s about the damn money’
In considering LIV Golf’s polarizing offer, Harold Varner III had seen too much to lie
By Kent Babb
April 5, 2023 at 8:42 a.m. PT
CHARLOTTE — One of these days, Harold William Varner IV’s father will have some unusual questions to answer. For one, why does their house have a shoe room? It’s ostensibly a home office, with a computer and printer on a desk at its center. But the boy’s parents rarely use the computer or print anything or sit at the desk, which is buried in papers, folders and the various collectible flotsam his daddy accumulates from his job. Somewhere in the pile is an invitation to play in this week’s Masters, which, considering golf’s civil war, should be interesting. On the floor there’s a walking boot his dad hates but sometimes has to wear anyway, three golf bags, a table that displays two footballs and a state trooper’s hat that obscures the small metal trophy that changed everything. “That’s Saudi. I don’t give a f---,” Harold William Varner III says as his 16-month-old son, whom he and wife Amanda call Liam, does pre-bedtime laps around the desk. Fourteen months ago, Varner drained a 92-foot eagle putt from the fringe of the 18th green to win the Saudi International, a marquee event on the Asian Tour and the bigger of Varner’s two professional wins. “I’m not really into trophies.”
He is, though, very much into premium sneakers. At least 800 pairs, most of them Air Jordans, fill the clear display containers lining the walls. Others are in unopened boxes or in the room’s crawl space. Jordan Brand sponsors Varner and keeps sending shipments, he says, months after he announced he was leaving the PGA Tour to join LIV Golf, the renegade circuit financed by the Saudi Arabian government.
Perhaps Liam will ask about that someday, too. Everyone else has, and his father’s answers have been notable for their unvarnished honesty: Yes, he did it for the money. “I play golf so I can change the direction of my family’s life,” says Varner, 32. “And that’s it. No other reason.” When he joined LIV in August, he says, its public relations apparatus sent Varner the same talking points it sent other players. He ignored them. Instead, he posted on Instagram that it was “simply too good of a financial breakthrough,” a chance for a Black man from rural North Carolina to acquire generational wealth. In other words, Harold III made a decision that factored in the experiences of Harold I and Harold II and saw a one-time opportunity to change the math for Harold IV, a possible Harold V and beyond. So what about LIV chief executive Greg Norman’s declaration that players’ motivation to defect from the PGA Tour expands beyond greed? That golf can be an instrument of global diplomacy and that LIV players wish to grow the game? “They’re full of s---; they’re growing their pockets,” Varner says. “I tell them all the time, all of them: ‘You didn’t come here to f---ing grow the f---ing game.’ ”
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@WhiskeyDawg
Might make the cut
Rahm looking crisp
Wild scorecard