This is where a story can take you and the flavor that can ooze when passion and soul are your pilots: To Pilara Golf Club in Buenos Aires and Round 2 of the 2018 Open de Argentina where a smooth 7-iron from 175 yards strikes a golf ball that bounces once, then settles in the hole. “You won the car,” caddie Norberto (Beto) Gandara says. Only the man with passion and soul returns a warm smile and replies, “No, you won the car.”

To the stage of the 2013 Massachusetts Open where a pall hangs thick in the aftermath of the heinous Boston Marathon bombing. “I was moved,” says the man with passion and soul who announces pre-tournament that he’ll donate his prize money to charity. Easy to say beforehand. Noble afterward when you win, then flex your integrity and slide the entire prize, $15,000, over to One Fund Boston. To Miami where players in the Shell Championship, the finale to the 2018 PGA Tour LatinoAmerica season, are focused on scores and swift exits. Save for the man with passion and soul who seeks out tournament organizers, rules and communications staffers to deliver hand-written thank-you notes. “Thank-you notes? Who does that?” asks a PGA Tour staffer. The answer is Evan Harmeling, the man whose essence is wrapped in passion and soul. “He almost makes a better book than article,” says Will Green. “Yes, he has a passion for golf. But his journey, and the way he embraces life in every respect, is so interesting. He’s as genuine as they come.”

Rarely does a conversation with Harmeling get too far along before an inquisitor’s tone is tinted in wonderment. To wit, how many kids from Princeton are in their 10th year of professional golf, still driving to make the PGA Tour? Always, the man from North Reading laughs. “Not many, that’s for sure” and never does Harmeling feel uneasy. He graduated with a degree in politics in 2012 and is at peace with the journey that has unfolded – several years playing in Canada on the MacKenzie Tour, nearly five seasons on the LatinoAmerica, and now, at 32, a fulltime member of the Korn Ferry Tour – Triple A ball, to give it context. “Do I want to do more? Yes. I’m closer to the PGA Tour than ever, so I know I’ve made progress,” says Harmeling, who won on the LatinoAmerica Tour in 2019 and then on the Korn Ferry Tour in the fall of 2020. Two wins over a span of 29 tournaments poured more gas on his competitive fire. “Golf is a great game and I love playing it. I love to compete at a really high level,” he says. “I just love to get in a tense situation on the course when it completely means something.” Therein rests the glory of Evan Harmeling. In a world that at times is suffocating with varying degrees of hatred and divisiveness, Harmeling is fresh air at about 10-to-15 knots, a man whose love of his job is infectious and was easily spotted at an early age. “I would arrive at 6 a.m. for work and Evan would already be there,” said former Andover CC head professional Mike Menery, now the GM at Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. “When I left at 6 p.m., he was still hitting balls. “At 11 years old, I could put him out with anybody. He was a good player, yes, but he was even better company.”

Truth is, says Green, who has been the Princeton golf coach for 22 years, you almost blush with envy when you’re around Harmeling, as he was recently because he still serves as the golfer’s instructor. “He is so smart and has such an awareness of the world going on around him,” says Green. “I admire his ability to have perspective. He has a beautiful wife, a baby who amplifies how happy he is, and he appreciates that golf is his passion and he’s able to make a living at it.” Suggest to Green that Harmeling has veered off a path that one would have expected of a Princeton man and the coach will politely disagree. The university’s informal motto – “Princeton in the nation’s service and the service of humanity” – defines Harmeling. “How many would have given their entire check to charity, as he did, or given the caddie a car, as he did?” says Green. “He has traveled and seen so much, and he’s embraced all of it.” Indeed, the breadth of Harmeling’s views of the world has been inspiring, from living in the pastoral surroundings of Charlotte, Vt. (pop. 3,754), to the stunning expanse of Rio de Janeiro (pop. 6.8 million). From skiing Green Mountains to exploring volcanoes. From cozy quarters in suburban Boston to areas through Canada and the U.S. to more than 22 countries across Central and South America. From chasing down your best friend, Colin Brennan, in the Mass. Junior Championship in 2005 to making birdies on two of your last three holes to win a LatinoAmerica tournament in Jamaica 14 years later.

Good gracious, this journey. “I’ve been lucky to do what I love and to travel the world and see new places. I remember the first time I landed in Chile, I was so excited to go somewhere new,” says Harmeling, who is settled now in Atlantic Beach, Fla., with his Brazilian wife, Ariel, and their 4-month-old daughter, Naya. Ariel’s native language is Portuguese “but her English is an A while my Portuguese is a D+,” laughs Harmeling. He grades himself much higher, however, on his appreciation of Brazilian food, from the soothing taste of an acai (“It’s basically a smoothie, only healthier and better,” says Harmeling) to the “magical mandioca root,” to eggs with avocado and pesto, to his newest interest, making bread. Sounds appetizing, much like the career Harmeling is scripting. “He goes to the golf course,” says Green, “because he wants to and there is beauty in that.”