How my golf hero took his driver to the crippling pain in my back

I JUST lost an entire week out of my life, and all I have to say is thank God for Padraig Harrington. And, I suppose, thank God for the BBC and its wire-to-wire coverage of the British Open.

One thing the past week has taught me is this: never again will I be sceptical of people who suffer from back pain.

Although I’m over the worst of it now, I’m still typing this with one finger because I’m propping myself up on an elbow in order to protect my back. I don’t, under any circumstances, want to put it out again.

It started last Friday week with a twinge when I woke up.

No big deal, just a slightly uneasy feeling around the base of the spine. As long as I avoided sudden movements, everything seemed to be all right.

I even went out to play golf on the Saturday, and went to a rather dramatic exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Saturday evening.

But by Sunday morning I knew I was in trouble. Although I got out of bed, every movement was genuine agony. It felt as if my back was about to sever.

Even lying down brought no relief. I tried dosing myself up to the gills with Neurofen, but to no avail.

The first visit to the doctor on Monday resulted in a cocktail of prescriptions. There was a powerful anti-inflammatory, which was accompanied by a leaflet outlining two pages of side-effects, the least of which included headaches and wind.

Then there was a stomach tablet to counter some of the more common side-effects. And then there was a large box of paracetamol.

The net effect of all this medication was to add stomach cramps to the back pain, which was steadily getting worse. By Wednesday I hadn’t slept for three nights, and was undeniably cranky.

And since standing under the shower was a task that was simply beyond me without help, my long-suffering wife was faced with the dilemma — would it be better to put up with me unwashed, or help me to wash?

By the time she had resolved that dilemma, I was a good bit cleaner, but also, I’m afraid, a good bit crankier.

When I went back to the doctor on Thursday (and caused a traffic jam in the process because it took me the best part of 10 minutes to lever myself out of the car at the side of a pretty busy road), the good man was mystified.

He had already prescribed what was normal in situations where a back had gone into heavy spasm, and if it had had no effect, drastic measures would be necessary. This conjured up all sorts of images for me — hours of surgery, weeks of traction, no end to the pain and misery. Already feeling pretty sorry for myself, by now I was a mass of self-pity.

However, it turned out that the drastic measures he had in mind were yet more prescriptions. Another big box of paracetamol, this time accompanied by a steroidal (as opposed to a non-steroidal) anti-inflammatory and a prescription for valium.

I’ve never taken valium before, and always associated it with the treatment of anxiety.

Now I know that it can be very useful (in small doses) in helping to relax the muscles and reduce muscle spasm.

As it happens, if the doctor had said that cyanide would ease the discomfort in my back, I’d have taken it.

Within 24 hours, thankfully, the new medication had begun to work. I’m still not sure whether it was the anti-inflammatory that was doing the business, or whether I was still in pain, but the valium had helped me not to care and the fog of pain and discomfort undeniably began to lift.

Mind you, I still couldn’t walk, but lying down was a lot more comfortable. And then Padraig Harrington came to the rescue.

As a golf addict who only took up the game late in life, I approach every round in a welter of anticipation. Anticipation is usually replaced by despair after about two holes, but every now and again I do manage to put a round together that brings me back for more punishment the following week.

Of course, the worst thing that can happen to a golf addict is a bad back, especially a bad back that is screaming loud enough to be heard all over the house.

Since there was no question of my standing on the first tee on either Saturday or Sunday, I had to be content with watching the golf on the telly.

And what a weekend I picked to do it. Padraig Harrington has always been a hero of mine. I’ve met him a couple of times, and while I’d be ready to bet the meetings made not the slightest impression on him, they really did impress me.

The first time was when he was the guest speaker at the presentation of the Irish Examiner Young Sports Stars of the Year awards. He said that he hadn’t prepared a script, but if the rest of the audience didn’t mind, he was going to say a few things to the young sports stars in the room about how to turn talent into success. And then, without a note, he spoke for 20 spellbinding minutes on that topic. No ego, no conceit, no vanity, but an awful lot of common sense. Ever since then I’ve thought that he had a quality about him that lifted him well out of the ordinary. And boy, did that quality show over the weekend.

THROUGHOUT most of Saturday and Sunday, he went about his business largely unnoticed by the BBC cameras, just quietly picking up a birdie here, a birdie there, until suddenly he had hauled back Sergio Garcia’s seemingly insurmountable lead.

Then that inevitable Harrington moment that all his fans have come to expect and to dread. The minute I saw the driver in his hands at the 18th, when he was a shot clear of Garcia, I thought, “oh, no!” There’s some desire in him that makes him want to produce a huge gesture at moments like this. Perhaps he’s read too often about himself that he is the product of hard work rather than real talent, and he wants to show us all he is capable of moments of genius.

Whatever it is, he almost managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory — and if that had happened, his reputation as a nice guy who can’t win might well have been cemented forever.

But it didn’t. A more clinical opponent than Garcia — Retief Goosen, say — might have punished Harrington for the mistake on the 18th. But once they got into a matchplay situation with the four-hole play-off, Harrington’s real genius, his ability to compete with mind and body, came into its own.

In the process he performed two miracles. First, he proved that nice guys can finish first. And second, he enabled this poor old columnist, who hadn’t been able to stand upright for a week, to dance a jig around his sittingroom.

Thanks, Padraig.