## Harold Varner: Giving back to the game of golf
As a youngster, Harold Varner III tuned his golfing skills practising on a makeshift hole near his home in Gastonia, North Carolina.
In reality that meant taking aim at a water tank that sat beyond a strip of trees beside his parents’ house.
From those humble beginnings, Varner has graduated to being a winner on both the European and Asian Tours and in 2023 secured his maiden LIV Golf victory in Washington D.C.
Varner was a standout golfer while studying at East Carolina University and in 2011 became the first player to win both the North Carolina Amateur Championship and North Carolina Amateur Match Play Championship in the same year.
That was also where he met his future wife Amanda Singleton, but in 2012 his focus was on earning his bachelor’s degree in business management and fulfilling his golfing ambitions by turning professional.
There was an early first appearance at a major when Varner qualified for the 2013 U.S. Open as the first alternate from the Rockville sectional.
He stepped up to the Web.com Tour (now known as the Korn Ferry Tour) in 2014 and in his second season finished 25th on the regular season money list.
That earned him a place on the PGA Tour for 2015-16 and he became the first African-American to acheive his card that way.
Smash GC