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Panthers head coach Ron Rivera's fire T-shirt at practice is a nod to Harold Varner III's head cover
On Sunday, Harold Varner III was thrust into a position he's never been in during his PGA Tour career: the final pairing of a major. Understandably, the moment may have gotten to Varner, as he made a mess of the third and fourth holes and eventually carded a nightmarish 81 to fall well out of contention. HV3 was a was a great sport about it afterwards, which came as a surprise to no one who has followed his career. You won't find a better, more down-to-earth guy than Varner, who last summer was cutting his parents lawn the day after making one of the biggest paychecks of his life.
Varner's personality makes him a lovable character for just about anyone he meets, including Ron Rivera, the head coach of Varner's favorite NFL team, the Carolina Panthers. The two have struck up a friendship of sorts, and Rivera has invited Varner to Panthers practice on multiple occasions, most recently on Wednesday morning. As a nod to HV3, Rivera wore a T-shirt to practice with Varner's "Gerald" head cover doing the dab slapped across it:
That shirt is FIRE. The head cover, named "Gerald Varner," has been around for some time now, and it even has its own Twitter account. Gerald has also been put on Varner's new putter head cover, where he's doing the dab:
And now Gerald is dabbing on T-shirts worn by NFL head coaches. Pretty cool moment for Varner, who Rivera sent a text to on Sunday after the tough round according to ESPN Staff writer David Newton.
"Yeah, you know, just being a coach," Varner said of Rivera's text message. "[he said] good things are going to happen, learn from it, and I told him some of the things I was thinking and he was like 'you're spot on, just keep doing what you're doing and good results are going to come from that.'"