In a gritty display of resilience, Brian Harman captured the 2025 Valero Texas Open at TPC San Antonio, securing his fourth PGA Tour victory and his first since the 2023 Open Championship. The final round on Sunday tested the field with cold temperatures hovering around 50 degrees and winds gusting up to 32 mph, turning the Oaks Course into a battleground of attrition.
Harman’s 3-over 75 in those brutal conditions was enough to finish at 9-under 279 for the tournament, beating runner-up Ryan Gerard by three shots and earning $1.71 million from the $9.5 million purse.
Harman entered Sunday with a three-shot lead, built on a pair of 6-under 66s and an even-par 72 in Saturday’s windy third round. The final day started shakily — a bogey on the 4th, another on the 6th, and a double bogey on the 9th after a wayward tee shot shrank his cushion to one over Andrew Novak and two over a charging Gerard.
The 38-year-old lefty from Georgia, though, steadied himself with pars at 10 and 11, then delivered the decisive blows: a 15-foot birdie putt on the 12th and a bunker up-and-down for birdie on the par-5 14th. Those gains stretched his lead back to three, and despite bogeys at 15 and 16, his challengers faltered late — Novak bogeyed 15, 17 and 18 to tie for third at 5-under with Maverick McNealy (72), while Gerard’s 3-under 69 landed him solo second at 6-under.
The stats tell a tale of survival: Harman hit just 17 greens in regulation over the weekend, a feat not seen in a PGA Tour win since Jason Day in 2010. His short game and a new TaylorMade Spider 5K-ZT putter — swapped in for this event after ranking 145th in strokes gained putting this season — proved clutch, ranking him fifth in putting for the week and gaining over five shots on the field. His iron play (second in strokes gained approach) kept him in contention despite the wind’s chaos, where the Sunday scoring average soared to 74.8, with only nine players breaking par.
Beyond the leaderboard, Harman’s win carried emotional weight. He played with a “heavy heart,” dedicating the victory to family friend Cathy Dowdy, who suffered severe injuries rescuing his son from a rip current in October 2024 and remains in poor health.
“I was thinking about her all day,” Harman told NBC’s Damon Hack post-round, his voice tinged with gratitude for the support back home in St. Simons Island.
The victory, Harman’s first 72-hole lead conversion since Hoylake in 2023, vaults him from No. 83 to No. 19 in the FedExCup standings and sends him to the Masters with momentum.
In a field where tournament headliners like Hideki Matsuyama and Ludvig Aberg missed the cut, and others like Jordan Spieth (T12) and Tony Finau (T18) couldn’t close, Harman’s blend of grit and guile stood out. As he put it, “I didn’t have my best stuff today, but good enough to make a few putts.” On a windswept Sunday in San Antonio, that was more than enough.
