No looking back for Harold Varner III at RBC Heritage

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – Sometimes, your greatest obstacle isn’t what lies ahead but what rests behind you.

RELATED: Leaderboard | Harold Varner III shoots 63 to take RBC Heritage lead | Five Things to Know: Harbour Town

And, yes, we know you hear all the time how professional golfers preach the need to “let it go” and to “focus on the next shot.” Well, guess what? Sometimes they can’t walk the walk without a gentle push.

Or make that a more forceful push because Butch Harmon has been around too long to do a feel-good waltz when your feelings are hurt. So, when one of his newest students, Harold Varner III, sounded angry over the phone Friday afternoon – a ruling had not gone his way and his ball was deemed out-of-bounds at a key juncture in Round 2 of the RBC Heritage – Harmon suggested they strip away the peripheral stuff and get to the bottom line.

“You played a beautiful round,” said Harmon, who had monitored from his home in Las Vegas and knew that Varner had played 14 holes in 3-under in tough conditions before playing the last five holes in 4-over. “Stay positive, that’s your strength.”

If he needed a reminder, Harmon had that, too. The previous week, at the Masters, Harmon told Varner on Saturday night that he’d meet him at 10 a.m. Sunday at the practice area. “He’s going to rip me for shooting 80,” Varner kidded his caddie, Chris Rice.

“Rip him? The third round (weather) was brutal,” said Harmon. “He’s so upbeat, so fun to be around with, we just talked about going out and having a great day.”

Varner closed with a 69 at Augusta, finished joint 23rd, and has ridden that momentum – and Harmon’s warm embrace – into the pole position through three rounds of the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links.

Bouncing back from that miserable finish Friday, Varner a bogey-free, 8-under 63, pushed to 11-under 202, and owns a one-stroke lead over Ireland’s Shane Lowry (65), South African Erik van Rooyen (67) and second-round leader Patrick Cantlay (70).

Others are very much in the mix, however. Four are tied at 9-under – Hudson Swafford, former champ Matt Kuchar, Stepp Straka, and Aaron Wise. Then there are four more at 8-under – Tommy Fleetwood, Billy Horschel, Joel Dahmen, and Jordan Spieth, whose hiccup at the 18th hole is a perfect segue back to our entry point about putting the bad things out of your mind and pushing forward.

Needing a mere 18 inches to put the bow around a tidy 4-under 67 that had provided plenty of electricity by a 22-foot eagle putt from off the green at the 15th, Spieth sloppily and inexplicably pushed the tap-in wide right. Never did a round of 68 feel so deflating and while Spieth is still just three off the lead, what is always a challenge for golfers at this level is to see how quicky they forget.

The unheralded South African, who missed a 7-foot birdie putt at 15 at about the same time Spieth was getting Jim Nantz to gasp, “Oh, no,” said it comes with the job. “It was easy to move on,” he said of the short putt that would have given him a share of the lead.

“I saw it dead straight, and it broke left to right. I'm human. What are you going to do about it?”

Pretty much, you do what Cantlay did at the 18th – center-stripe a driver 302, stuff a 162-yard wedge to 4 feet and make the putt. It sure helped him forget about bogeys at 11, 12 and 17 that would deny him the lead or even a share of it.

With gold-star nonchalance, Cantlay shrugged his shoulders. The bad happens; go forth.

“I feel like, as long as you're sticking to your process and you believe in your process, things are going to go in your favor.”

Usually, that’s easy for Varner, but he concedes that the dismal finish to Friday’s round went home with him. “I would say I’m really good at putting things aside, but I did not put that (ruling incident) aside,” he said.

Harmon’s advice helped and so did the arrival of the third round because when he got back to Harbour Town Varner was all business.

His challenge Sunday will be to put aside all the talk that often follows him around, that in seven seasons and 178 PGA TOUR tournaments, Varner has yet to win. (He was second here a year ago, but he started Round 4 eight off the lead and finished four behind Stewart Cink.)

“He’s due,” said Harmon, who will remind his student that his strength is his positivity.

Then again, given that there are 20 players within four of the lead, it’s not as if Varner doesn’t have fierce competition. Cantlay, with four of his six career wins coming last season, would appear to be the most formidable, but van Rooyen made it into the winner’s circle at the Barracuda Championship in the fall and Lowry is playing consistently as well as anyone on the PGA TOUR besides Scottie Scheffler.

Watching to see how Spieth bounces back will be intriguing and there is a parade of players at 9- and 8-under who could shoot 64 and win.

But Varner is the kid from the Carolinas who professes a love of Harbour Town and a burning desire to put to rest all this talk of his never having won on the PGA TOUR.

“I feel like it just keeps giving me more confidence,” he said. “The best thing that I can do is just run my course, like this is my journey.”