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Brian Harman uses a heckler who said he didn’t ‘have the stones’ as motivation

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Brian Harman continued to rave about the fans at Royal Liverpool after capturing The Open Championship, but portions of the Hoylake crowd seemed to be rooting against the American Sunday afternoon.

There was a small smattering of boos on the first tee, which propelled Harman instead of bothering the former Georgia Bulldog.

Full-field scores from the 151st Open Championship

“You had [Tommy] Fleetwood and Rory [McIlroy] making a run,” Harman said. “It’s fine. Everybody has got their team they’re rooting for. Yeah, I heard them, and I don’t hold any – if they wanted me to not play well, they should have been really nice to me.”

There was one spectator in particular who wasn’t “really nice” to Harman over the weekend. Saturday, as Harman tried to re-focus after two early bogeys, one fan attempted to get in the head of the newly minted major champion.

“After I made the second bogey yesterday, a guy, when I was passing him, he said, ‘Harman, you don’t have the stones for this,'” he said Sunday with a laugh. “That helped. … It helped snap me back into, ‘I’m good enough to do this. I’m going to do this. I’m going to go through my process, and the next shot is going to be good.’”

Harman would make four birdies against no bogeys in his final 14 holes Saturday before playing a similar final round. The three-time PGA Tour winner bogeyed two of his first five holes Sunday, rebounding with four birdies and just a single bogey from that point forward.