Finding the farmer: The search for the man who almost crashed his tractor after Nick Taylor’s RBC Canadian Open win

CLAVET, Saskatchewan – Nick Taylor inspired so many tales. Brian Harder had never shared his.

These were the makings of a meeting neither man could forget.

Ever since Taylor holed the putt – the 72-footer that made him the first Canadian in nearly seven decades to win the RBC Canadian Open – his countrymen had happily told him where they had witnessed it from.

It was the sort of moment that sears time and space into your memory, because of both the significance and the surprise.

The Toronto Star declared Taylor’s putt the sports moment of the year in Canada. The U.S.-based Golfweek magazine called it golf’s top shot of 2023. The tournament’s logo has been changed to incorporate Taylor’s celebratory silhouette and Golf Canada produced an eight-part documentary devoted to that single stroke, its author and the chaos that ensued in the aftermath.

Fans flooded the 18th fairway while those around the green jumped up and down, arms raised in the air. Taylor’s Canadian peers charged the green and sprayed him with champagne. In the midst of the chaos and confusion, PGA TOUR player Adam Hadwin was tackled by a security guard who mistook him for an overzealous spectator.

“It was the most incredible atmosphere I've ever been a part of and it's not even close,” Taylor said. He received ovations at every tee and green that day, with the support reaching a raucous crescendo after his final putt.

The victory resonated well beyond Toronto’s Oakdale Golf & Country Club. It was the most-watched final round of the RBC Canadian Open since 2000, when Tiger Woods won after already claiming three of that year’s major championships.

Wayne Gretzky called that evening to congratulate Taylor, his name appearing on the car’s display as Taylor was ordering a celebratory cheat meal from McDonald’s. A viral video showed wedding guests surreptitiously streaming the tournament’s final holes during the vows. And then there was Harder, who was watching from his tractor as he harvested his crops in rural Saskatchewan.

The wide swath of people who celebrated Taylor’s victory – from the country’s greatest sporting icon to a farmer on the Canadian Prairies – illustrated its significance. Canada is passionate about its sports, and golf is among its favorites.

“Being recognized more in Canada, having some people come up and tell their stories because of how dramatic it was, I think has been a really cool part of (the win),” Taylor said. “Over time, it’s registered more and more, just the impact it has had on Canadians.”

But it was Harder’s story that stood out, the one Taylor shared months later when asked to epitomize the national reaction. He told it in January during a press conference at The Sentry, the PGA TOUR’s season-opening event.

“There was a guy – I was doing a thing in Saskatoon, and he's a farmer there,” Taylor said. “He said he was watching it on his iPad cutting his crop. When the putt went in, he jerked the wheel and he still sees the spot when he goes (by) and reminds himself of that every time. Just, like, certain stories, it's really cool.”

Taylor’s retelling sparked a search for the anonymous farmer. Even those who knew Harder well weren’t aware of his close call.

Taylor’s account was mostly accurate.

Harder was actually spraying the field for weeds, riding in his John Deere R4038 sprayer. It’s a large piece of machinery, standing 13 feet tall and weighing 15 tons. Two 60-foot booms extend from its side like wings, and its 310-horsepower engine can canvass a field at approximately 15 mph.

Like the fans around Oakdale’s 18th green, Harder threw his hands in the air when Taylor made his putt. “I just remember the chills down my spine,” said Harder, 37. He became entranced by the scenes shown on the tablet mounted above his windshield.

When he looked down, he realized he was moments away from a potentially costly, if not catastrophic, collision. A large industrial tire stood in his path. The tire weighs hundreds of pounds and has a diameter of more than 10 feet. It was once used as a watering hole for the cattle that used to graze in the field.

Harder quickly jerked the steering wheel and pulled back on the throttle to stop the tractor. His distance from the obstacle depends on the audience.

“I tell my dad 100 feet,” Harder said, “but it was probably like 20.”

He sat in the idling tractor for the next 10 minutes and watched the scenes unfold from nearly 2,000 miles away. Taylor’s celebration. Hadwin’s tackle. Innumerable replays. When Harder resumed his work, he was close enough to the tire that he had to go in reverse before going around it.

Harder was reminded of the incident a month later, when he passed a verdant patch of 4-foot-tall weeds, several hundred square feet in area. He was confused at first, but quickly remembered the reason.

“It brought back the chills,” he said.

But Harder waited to tell anyone until meeting Taylor at a charity dinner in August. He didn’t think anyone would care, except perhaps the man responsible.

In hindsight it all made sense.

“He’s just one of those guys that gets into these situations,” said Harder’s longtime friend, Brandon Sparrow. “He’s a guy that has a story for everything.”

Harder is the gregarious sort who would not hesitate to tell a PGA TOUR player about the time he nearly crashed his tractor while watching him win. Think of the character Edward Bloom from the movie “Big Fish,” an outsized personality who finds himself in more improbable situations than most.

“He tells great stories,” said Harder’s wife, Stephanie. “I guess that’s why Nick remembered his.”

Brian Harder also is a golf fanatic. He has a simulator in his basement, intentionally installed across the house from the bedroom so he won’t wake his wife with his late-night sessions. The Harders’ Irish wolf hound is named Rory, after McIlroy, the Northern Irishman who’s won 26 PGA TOUR titles (including two RBC Canadian Opens).

Harder’s passion and his profession require similar characteristics. A fierce independence, a reliance on nature and a willingness to subject oneself to its whims. And both foster a deep connection to the land.

Both farming and golf have radically benefited from technology, as well.

The Harders have been farmers ever since Brian’s great-grandfather emigrated to central Canada in the early 1920s to escape the violence of the Russian Revolution (Jacob Harder was held at gunpoint, with a pistol in his mouth, before leaving for another land).

Some of the land that Brian farms today has been in the family for seven decades. Standing on his front porch, he can see eight grain bins on the horizon that stand next to his childhood home. The Harder family – including Brian’s parents, Don and Kim, who are in their 60s – still handles most of the work on their 8,000 acres in Clavet, a town of about 350 people in rural Saskatchewan. They harvest wheat, oats and barley. Their canola is sold to McDonald's and may have been used to cook the French fries that Taylor enjoyed after his win.

Long hours are still part of the job, but modern advancements have made the work easier. The large machinery is mostly self-driving thanks to GPS technology. Human intervention is minimal, giving Brian the opportunity to enjoy some entertainment while he wiles away the time. He mounts a tablet above his windshield to stream sporting events and TV shows.

“I try to stream things that aren’t, like, really intensive to watch because I do have to keep watch,” he said. “I try to passively pay attention but sometimes you get a little distracted.”

Golf is the perfect fodder because it does not require constant attention. It allows him to focus on his field and steal glances at his tablet while a player is swinging. There was one moment too monumental for this arrangement, however. Its magnitude captured his attention for a little too long.

When the PGA TOUR came calling, Troy Davies knew what he needed to do. He is one of the eight board members of Synergy 8 Community Builders, the philanthropic organization that put on the charity dinner where Harder and Taylor met last August.

“Being kind of a marketing guy for Synergy 8, I'm like, ‘We have to find this guy,’” Davies said.

Hundreds of text messages were sent as people canvassed their networks to find the unknown farmer in their midst. The search even became a conversation topic at games in the local recreational hockey league.

Considering the setting, it’s fitting to compare the undertaking to searching for a needle in a haystack. The attendance of the dinner had swelled from 600 to nearly 1,000 people after Taylor made his putt, forcing the organizers to expand the dining space.

There were no shortage of farmers in attendance, either.

Saskatchewan, which sits above Montana and North Dakota, has been called the “Breadbasket of the World” because of all the wheat grown there. It contains more than 40% of Canada’s cultivated farmland and is the country’s largest producer of grains and oilseeds.

Saskatchewan also has some of Canada’s highest golf participation rates, a testament to the synergy between the two pursuits. The province’s courses range from country clubs like Riverside in Saskatoon, where Taylor won the 2007 Canadian Amateur, to layouts with sand greens. The exact number of courses can vary depending on if farmers are using the land for golf or harvesting that year.

Inquiries to the Agriculture Council of Saskatchewan, the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, the province’s Ministry of Agriculture and the local chapter of the National Farmers Union were unable to find the subject of Taylor’s story. Golf Canada, the national governing body, asked its members to share their best stories about celebrating Taylor’s win, hoping the farmer would submit his. There was no luck.

As a last resort, the PGA TOUR posted on the Saskatoon section of Reddit on April 24. It was little more than a month before the start of RBC Canadian Open week. The post asked if anyone knew the identity of the farmer from Taylor’s tale. It tricked a eureka moment.

Sparrow, who’s also a farmer, was scrolling the social media site while in bed one night. “As one does,” he joked. He had not heard Harder’s story, but he remembered one of Harder’s rare Instagram posts, a photo of him and Taylor together at the dinner. Sparrow knew his friend was obsessed enough to be watching golf while driving his sprayer. He texted Harder that night.

“I immediately thought ‘This must be Brian Harder,’” Sparrow wrote in his message.

The search was over.

Harder had to create a Reddit account just to reply to the post. He and Taylor connected over a video call a couple weeks ago, and are scheduled to meet again at this week’s RBC Canadian Open.

“I heard it was quite the investigation to track you down,” Taylor said as Harder sat in his tractor, close to where he watched Taylor’s win.

Harder hosted a PGA TOUR camera crew two weeks ago to tell his story. He was planting seed for that year’s harvest, working 18-hour days to make the most of the brief window between the end of winter and the start of the growing season. Golf Channel’s coverage of the PGA Championship was streaming from the tablet in his tractor.

Though the dirt was covered by the brittle, ashen stalks of last year’s crop, the scene of last year’s near-crash was still dimly discernible.

“It looks OK now,” Harder said. “Within a year or two, it will go away, but the memory definitely won’t.”