LAST UPDATE | 27 Dec 2022
WE SHOULD HAVE known Pádraig Harrington wouldn’t fade away. Nothing in his character suggested he would, nothing from his history.
Anyone who dreams of being a journeyman but ends up as a champion is a little different. We rediscovered that fact in 2022.
A year ago he was nursing the wounds of an unforgiving Ryder Cup experience, weeks after passing a milestone birthday.
He was not to know it then but turning 50 proved to be more blessing than curse, granting him entry to the Champions Tour, where the courses are easier, the fields smaller. Four times he won there between June and November, and when he landed the US Senior Open in Bethlehem, a star was reborn.
“He will go down as one of the greatest Irish sports stars ever,” says fellow Irish professional Paul Dunne. “This year has just added to his legacy.”
Part of you wonders why Harrington still works on that legacy especially when an easier living was offered to him in the television studio. “Pádraig,” his close friend Paul McGinley explains, “will always want to play because he just loves that competitive element.”
Dunne knows all about it. Having befriended Harrington after turning pro, he saw first-hand how deep that competitive streak is.
“If you beat him, he’ll always persuade you to play him again. I have never met anyone who loves what they do as much as Padraig loves golf. He really is obsessed with it in a healthy way. He is a super competitive person, always working on his game, always seeking competition. He still takes a lot of pride in taking €50 off someone like me in a putting competition.”
When that’s in you, it never leaves you. Even the dark years that followed the 2007/08 Major wins brought sunshine when there only seemed shadow. He tied for fourth at the 2012 US Open after missing the cut in five of his previous nine Majors.
Nine years later, long after he’d ceased to appear relevant, he tied for fourth again at the US PGA, having learned to relax without ever losing that compulsion to get the most out of his talent.
Now it’s autumn in his career which makes him a Champions Tour rookie. And it also makes him a winner again. From June to November, he rediscovered what it was like to lift trophies.
“Being on the Champions Tour has helped me realise that how I’m thinking is much more important than how I’m swinging a golf club,” he told Golf.com in October.
“What I’m finding is the Champions Tour has really helped me mentally. Really helped me.
“There’s an element of ‘Right, I’m in contention here’, so I’m hitting a lot more shots under pressure and feeling that intensity and I feel that’s really going to help my game.”
Once upon a time winning didn’t define him. He was known as Mr Second Place, an unfair tag handed him after he posted the 20th runner-up finish of his career. That was before the first of his three Major championships.
Now when people see his resume, they don’t mention the 30 or so runner-up prizes, and if they do, it is only after they reference the Majors, the six wins on the PGA Tour, the 15 triumphs on the European Tour, and the fact that only 10 players have spent longer in the world’s top ten.
“Winning is winning,” Harrington said after that US Senior Open win in June. “We’re very fickle, golfers. Everything about is how we played our last round, how we played our last hole, how we played our last tournament, whatever way you want to look at it. Yeah, I just want to win.
“Like, honestly, I prefer — I’m not joking with this: I would prefer to win here than finish second at a PGA Tour event. You know, winning is winning, there’s something about it. The fact of the matter is putting yourself under pressure out there and having to hit the shots when people are watching, when it counts, is what’s exciting. No amount of finishing top-10 and somebody patting me on the back will do. I wouldn’t remember a top-10, but I’ll remember a win out here on the Champions Tour.”
Dunne remembers sitting with him as Harrington spoke about turning 50, the age you’re allowed enter Champions Tour events.
“I’ve seen how well he has been playing over the last few years and he has always had this thing that when he hits the Champions Tour that he is going to kill it because he has got the competitive nature, he knows he can win, he has got length on his side off the tee.
“He is always an optimist to be around. He is always working on the next thing, looking ahead to the next tournament, moving in the right direction, getting into the right mindset. His outlook on everything is always so positive which, in this game, is important because there are so many ups and downs. Some can get down; Pádraig never goes in that direction.
“He is so stubborn in keeping himself in that positive mindset. He is unique like that. You sit in a player’s lounge and you can always hear someone complain about something but I have never heard him complain about anything. He will always see the right side of things to make him play well.”
That’s always been there. In Paul Keane’s seminal book on Harrington, there is a story told about how he reworked his swing in the 1990s, forcing his fellow pros to re-evaluate his status. As an amateur he was considered good around the greens, but average elsewhere. In his early years as a pro, he worked with Bob Torrance on his swing and his flaws disappeared. “I think a lot of my fellow pros would rate Pádraig very highly now,” said Darren Clarke in 1999, just after Harrington had broken into the world’s top 50.
They’d learn to speak even higher as Harrington rose to number three. “It was pretty much impossible for him to get above that because of what Tiger (Woods) and Phil (Mickelson) were doing,” says Dunne. “Those apparent weaknesses that commentators talked about; I just never saw them.
“All I did see over the last few years was this super competitive person preparing for the Champions Tour by working on his speed. Like, he drives straight and long; he’s going to be 50 yards past everyone else off the tee on the Champions Tour.
“And that’s before we get to the rest of his game. His iron play is good; his short game is insanely strong.
“He always knows that no matter how bad it is, he will get it up and down anyway. His ability to accept misses is okay because he has faith in his short game. He has got a brilliant golf game but the mental side of it gives him that edge. Give Pádraig a sniff of victory and he’ll take it.”
What impresses Dunne so much about Harrington is his hunger because the touring life of a pro is an absurd life: so much time spent away from home, so many hours in airports and hotels.
Yet Harrington – despite having such a brilliant career – still wants to achieve more, even as he moves into his sixth decade.
“You have to give a lot of credit to Caroline (Harrington’s wife),” says Dunne. “There is no way he can live this (golfing) life and be as happy as he is without an incredible wife behind him to help out with all the things that is involved with raising a family. If he didn’t have that person by his side, it would be incredibly difficult for Pádraig.
“They make a great team. That is the X-Factor he has. They are extremely lucky to have each other.
“You can see (when you are on tour) when other people have something on their mind; Pádraig never has that problem. He has been able to chase his golfing dream while also having his family dream.
“His other big asset is his mind. It seems like he genuinely believes that if he gets within a shot of a title that he will win. And he always feels that no matter what shape his game is in, he feels he can win. I don’t know anyone else who has that belief.”
Is there another Major in him?
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” says Dunne.
No one should.
