Prior to that he'd only ever won one professional tournament, the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Pines in 2016.

The Asian Tour win opened up his world. He entered the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) top-50 for the first time and qualified for all of this year’s major championships. Full of confidence, he missed just one cut (at the US Open) and peaked as World No.35. He was away. 

Yet since signing with Greg Norman's controversial, Saudi-backed LIV Golf series – which returns to the same course for the LIV Golf Invitational Jeddah starting on Friday – Varner told reporters he has become "hated". 

"I’ve thought about it a lot," Varner said at a press conference alongside fellow past Saudi International winners, Dustin Johnson and Graeme McDowell.

"It got me into the Masters, I got into every other Major. I played well once I won.

“Things went a little crazy when I got back to the States. There's been adversity in my life ... but it’s pretty weird to win and be hated." 

Harold Varner III poses with the LIV Golf Jeddah trophy. PHOTO: Getty Images.

Varner compared the PGA Tour to a dysfunctional family. 

"It’s sad, sometimes. I just laugh. I like playing golf, these guys (on the LIV Golf tour) are a lot of fun, it’s cool that we hang out, we do things that we don’t do as much on PGA Tour,” Varner said.

"I think it’s … they call the PGA Tour a 'family'. But you leave that family and become hated. In a real family, no matter what your son does, your daughter does, you take care of them. It’s just not that way(with the PGA Tour).”

The 32-year-old spoke matter-of-factly, and at times humorously, ahead of the first LIV Golf Invitational to be played in Saudi Arabia since the controversial series started six events and five months ago at the Centurion Club in London. This week, Varner is back at  Royal Greens, which is bordered by the Red Sea and desert flatlands through which run the eerily empty boulevards and highways of King Abdullah Economic City, 90 kilometres north of Jeddah.

Varner said everyone who signed with LIV Golf "knew what we were getting into.”

"I think it’s easy to sit here and say what could happen, what should happen. For me, I knew what was going to happen. I didn’t think it was going to be easy,” he said.

"The people at LIV have done an unbelievable job. Because I don’t know about any ‘check marks’ (for LIV Golf's quest for OWGR points and thus 'legitimacy'), I could care less. I knew exactly what was going to happen in my career. I’ve accepted it.”

Varner said the OWGR has been part of golf for so long and "now some feathers have been ruffled.” 

"It’s awkward. But it’s funny, too,” Varner said. "It is what it is.”

McDowell, like Varner, finds it ironic that when he won the Saudi International in 2020 he was lauded by the same people who now call him a pariah, and worse. 

He said that the European Tour brought Saudi Arabia into the game and sanctioned “a huge amount of events in the Middle East and they’ve been incredibly successful with that.” 

"To me this was just another great opportunity to come to a nation that were hoping to put money into the game of golf,” McDowell said.

"And when I won here in 2020 it was the same as Harold, got back in the top-50 in the world, got me back in the Masters and got me back doing all the things I had missed for a few years. It was a huge win for me at the time and something I was proud of. 

"Here we stand two years later, the golfing globe has changed so much. The opinions on what we are doing here in this country have done a full 180.

“A huge amount of that is not real and driven by the media, unfortunately.”