Harry Higgs' mental resurgence vaults him into contention at Sanderson Farms Championship

Harry Higgs spent the two weeks off after the Fortinet Championship doing nothing all that fun, he said – except getting to work.

He’s excited to see the hard work pay off immediately.

Higgs shot an 8-under 64 Friday at the Sanderson Farms Championship, his low round on TOUR since March. He’s inside the top 10 heading into the weekend.

“I put a lot of work in over two weeks,” Higgs said of his break. “I missed going to see mom and dad, had to put my head down. … no booze, early to bed, a lot of the stuff that sometimes is not that much fun to do, I did to try to get myself into this position.”

Higgs has notched just one top-10 result in the 2023 calendar year, a tie for seventh at the Puerto Rico Open, and came into The Country Club of Jackson after five missed cuts in a row.

“Certainly relieved, and then I guess satisfied,” Higgs said of his emotions on finding the weekend in Mississippi. “You can’t move up if you don’t play for four days.”

Higgs said he’s been keenly working on the mental side of his game. Fans of the PGA TOUR will have long known the happy-go-lucky Higgs to have a larger-than-life personality. But Higgs admitted he didn’t quite know what happened or where his eternal optimism went.

Higgs is now mediating every day. And when things are starting to go sideways on the course he gets back to breathing deeply and returning to what he calls, “the circle.”

“I get pulled back into the circle, and the circle just exists, the things that I can control, which in this lovely game are almost next to nothing,” Higgs said with a smile. “Stay in the circle. Attitude, effort, stay calm and be optimistic.

“I think (the optimism) was still in there, but it wasn't at the forefront. When I started to struggle, it made the struggles worst.

“Just trying to get back to being optimistic; whether or not I think I'm swinging it well, swinging it poorly, I know it'll come around; whether I'm playing well or not playing well, it'll come around.”

Higgs sits at 11 under through 36 holes in Mississippi and is just three shots back of the lead held by Ben Griffin. Higgs’ second-round 64 moved him up nearly 40 spots on the leaderboard.

He said the key to his day was his ball-striking. The ball was staying “within a tighter window” and he was able to pick-and-choose where he could be aggressive.

“I just built momentum throughout the day, and next thing you know you hole a couple bonus putts at the end, and you move further and further up the leaderboard. I've done this before. I haven't done it in a while, but I've played rounds like that before. So, it's nice to do it again, and hopefully roll that into tomorrow, same thing, and then I'm going to be optimistic tonight and tomorrow that I'm going to swing it even better tomorrow than I did today, which was pretty good,” Higgs said.

“I could always nit-pick and want more. We all could. But I'm going to be optimistic that tomorrow is going to be even better. And Sunday is going to be even better than that.”