SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. – Jay Moseley usually avoids using terms like freak to describe golfers who are extremely gifted athletically. When it comes to rising Ohio State junior Vaughn Harber, Moseley has no choice.
“The athleticism is pretty difficult to comprehend,” Moseley said. “You should see him throw a football.”
One look at the 6-foot-3 Harber, a 20-year-old from Blacklick, Ohio, and it’d be easy to mistake him as one of the Buckeyes’ backup quarterbacks. Harber’s golf potential, however, is very much untapped.
He’s so green that when Harber punched his ticket to Shinnecock Hills last Monday, he wasn’t entirely sure when the tournament would be held. His knowledge of the course wasn’t much better.
“I’d only known what I’d seen on Instagram and YouTube,” Harber said.
Harber’s coach calls him a late bloomer, mainly because he only logged about a half-dozen junior tournaments per year and never competed outside of Ohio or an adjacent state.
“No one really knew what to expect,” Moseley said.
When Ohio State played the East Lake Cup during Harber’s first semester, that practice round marked just the fifth time ever that Harber had been on Bermudagrass.
“We knew he was talented, we knew he had a lot of speed, but we had not really seen him play on a lot of courses comparable to what we play,” Moseley added.
Freak injury
It didn’t help that Harber suffered a bucket-handle tear of his left meniscus less than a year before arriving to college.
Harber, just weeks removed from breaking the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s 36-hole championship scoring record by five strokes on the Buckeyes’ home Scarlet Course, joined some buddies for a pickup flag-football game on the morning before Thanksgiving. While Harber’s team was on the sidelines, the state golf champion saw a soccer ball and a nearby goal, and the freak athlete in him couldn’t resist.
“I kicked it and my knee just exploded,” Harber said.
Typically, people who suffer such meniscus tears are in excruciating pain, but Harber felt nothing, to the point where he and his family were unsure surgery was even needed. He ended up getting the procedure done and missed nearly eight months of action. He returned in time for the 2024 Columbus District Amateur and won.
“He got on campus, and we quickly realized that this guy’s ceiling was extremely high,” Moseley said.
Gaining confidence
With Ohio State graduating four seniors from its 2024 NCAA semifinal squad — including PGA Tour player Neal Shipley and Korn Ferry Tour pro Maxwell Moldovan, there was plenty of opportunity for Harber to seize playing time. Sure, he’s only collected four top-10s through two seasons for the Buckeyes, but he’s also missed just one starting lineup.
When Harber teed it up in final qualifying last Monday in Westerville, Ohio, he’d only ever done local qualifying twice — the first time coming pre-injury, when he drew an early tee time on a frigid, wet morning where the temperature was barely over freezing and it was nearly snowing. Harber finished his round inside the cut line, only to wait all day for two players in the last two groups to bump him from a playoff.
Getting through Monday’s 36-hole marathon alongside Tour winners Davis Thompson and J.B. Holmes, plus All-American Arni Sveinsson of LSU, was arguably the biggest confidence-booster of Harber’s young career.
He possesses a well-balanced game, though he’s worked especially hard to improve his putting, wedges and mental game. He’s been a part-time caddie at Scioto Country Club since last summer, saving up for pro golf and viewing the game through a different lens.
“He’s excited for this event to really open some doors for him to shine and play in more premium events and help his development,” Moseley said. “I don’t think the golf course and the setup will overwhelm him. I think, if anything, he’s going to be more comfortable on a course that puts a demand on really good fundamentals and course strategy and discipline. He loves courses that make you be more conservative.”
‘Make cut, go from there’
Harber added that competing against the best players in the world is like a dream.
“My main goal is to soak it all in and have fun and not let score or anything like that dictate how I go about the week,” he said. “An actual goal would probably be to make the cut first, then go from there.”
Still, Harber joked to Moseley that he was probably going to hit someone off the first tee on Thursday.
“He knows it’s coming,” Moseley added, referencing nerves, “and once he gets it out of the way, he’ll probably settle in a little bit. I think he’s well on his way to believing more in himself, and that’s the ultimate goal for all of us coaches, for our players to believe in themselves as much as we believe in them.
“No matter what happens this week, I think he’s going to use this as a big catapult.”
