Bryan makes history as first South Carolinian to win Heritage

Wesley Bryan didn’t recognize the nerves until they manifested late Sunday at Harbour Town Golf Links.

He had just missed an opportunity for more security in his bid to becoming the first homegrown player to win the South Carolina PGA Tour event as he walked to the 17th tee. The Chapin native and former South Carolina Gamecock didn’t know of the Palmetto State hex before this week.

And with a one-shot lead on the 71st hole of the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing, the moment caught up with him.

“I just went to purple a bit, and a little more than a burp came up,” Bryan said.

He needn’t have worried. Bryan delivered steely golf shots to close out his first PGA Tour victory, finishing at 13-under-par 271 after a final round 67 to become the first from his home state to win the tournament in its 49th year.

His Pepto-colored pants clashed with the tartan jacket, but Bryan celebrated with family and friends on the 18th green as fans chanted Gamecocks cheers. Bryan earned $1.17 million with the victory, an invite to the 2018 Masters tournament — the 27-year-old is an Augusta resident — and a head start on a spot in the season-ending Tour Championship.

Bryan came from four behind to win Sunday, the fifth consecutive year the winner has come from at least three shots back.

He tamed a course that frustrated other contenders Sunday after playing so docile the first three days.

Bryan won by a shot over Luke Donald, who missed out on his first Heritage victory while finishing runner-up a record fifth time. Donald couldn’t recover from an early double bogey at No. 2.

“I just keep trying,” Donald said. “Obviously it’s a place I feel comfortable and I like and I’ve had a lot of success. I’ve just got to keep pounding away, and hopefully I’ll get there.”

Ask Bryan how he rose so quickly from mini tours to a three-time Web.com winner and PGA Tour champion, and Bryan is stumped.

He recalled shooting a 100 at a tournament in college and later playing on a developmental circuit called the SwingThought Tour. He gained a level of fame by teaming up with his brother, George Bryan IV, to create viral trick-shot videos and later as a contestant on Golf Channel’s “The Big Break.”

In some ways, he felt he played his best at Dutch Fork High School. But he hypothesized Sunday that perhaps now he better handles his emotions and has improved his mid-iron play.

And Harbour Town fit his eye this week.

He played a stretch of 42 consecutive holes without a bogey before dropping a shot on the par-3 fourth Sunday. But he charged into contention with four consecutive birdies starting on No. 4 and grabbed the lead with a birdie at 15.

Bryan grew up playing on his family’s 10-acre golf playground in Chapin. The setup wasn’t a course but a series of small greens requiring shots wrapped around the pines.

The purpose was to ensure the game was fun, said Bryan’s father, George Bryan III, a PGA teaching professional. And the result was for Bryan to embrace feel over the technical aspects of the game.

“To me, he’s a little bit of a throwback player,” said Bryan’s caddie, William Lanier. “This day and age, it’s like pound the ball and hit it high in the air — he likes to work the ball and change trajectory.”

Bryan’s dad played the Heritage in 2004 after winning a qualifier. Wesley Bryan remembers tagging along that week as a 14-year-old, plopping himself at the dining table of the top players in the field and bugging them with questions.

He went from “one of the most annoying kids out there” to winning the event 13 years later. A S.C. Junior Golf Association official asked Bryan early in the week how it would feel to be the first South Carolinian to win on Hilton Head.

Bryan didn’t know the history, but he believed he could contend with the game’s best.

“And just to be able to come out here and show it for four days and the last couple of holes is something you can only dream of, honestly,” Bryan said.

This story was originally published April 16, 2017 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Bryan makes history as first South Carolinian to win Heritage."