K Club may host Irish Ryder rookies
Harrington himself, Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke intend to be there again, while all the indications are that Graeme McDowell will play his way into the side as his game gets better almost every week.
If that comes to pass, the excitement in Co Kildare that week will amazing, although either way Ireland is about to host an enormous event that nowadays possibly trails only the Olympics and World Cup in worldwide significance.
It represents a huge task for all at The K Club. Its owner, Michael Smurfit, and golf director Paul Crowe were in Oakland Hills to see what’s involved and realised the Ryder Cup was even bigger than they thought.
The golf course won’t be a problem, but getting 40,000 people around it to watch four matches in the morning and afternoon of the first two days will be. And then there’s the question of space - the media centre at Oakland Hills, the best and most modern yet, covered two soccer pitches.
“I just hope we get the weather at The K Club,” said Harrington.
“I imagine they could fill it 50 times over. The atmosphere will be second to none. Nobody celebrates more than the Irish and you saw that here. I hope they can find a way of getting more people in. The K Club will be excellent and they’ll manage it superbly.
“We had a lot of strength in depth this time and I don’t see why we won’t get stronger,” said Harrington.
“We do have a missing link and that is we need to win majors. We need a few major winners, we need that sort of real fire power. We had a lot of depth this week but we just need the real fire power to lead it out there.”
Almost incredibly, Harrington was kept in touch with how his cousin, Joey Harrington, was faring in a football match for the Detroit Lions and could provide almost chapter and verse later as to how the quarter-back threw three touchdowns in his side’s win.
Surely he should have been concentrating on his own game?
“I was happy to follow it as I went around,” he said.
“Everybody would tell you like they told me about the Cork game in ’99. It’s nice to have something else to think about. As I was going along, people would say ‘Go Lions’ and I would ask how they were doing and I got the score eight times or so.
“The Ryder Cup should be showcasing golf to the world because it’s one of the few events non-golfers watch. It is intensely competitive but this time it was very fair. By getting the lead and keeping the momentum, it dampened their spirits. They got very loud on Saturday, but in a great way. They were supporting their team and that’s all you could ask.”
The Ryder Cup is finding as regular a home in Europe as it once did in the US and it’s something Harrington and his teammates are only too well aware of, in a negative sense.
The Americans are wounded animals and they will come to Ireland, possibly with Mark O’Meara as captain, thirsting for revenge.
“By winning the matches so often, we have motivated the US team and we are building ourselves up for a big fall,” said Harrington.
“Next time, we can expect them to come out with a point to prove. It’s great celebrating now but they will fight back.”
Bernhard Langer and his backroom team used the underdog tag to huge effect last week and it has left their US counterparts smarting just a little.
Asked to comment, Hal Sutton snapped: “The media did a hell of a job marketing them as an underdog, not the Europeans, first of all. I want to address how you did it - the world rankings. So if there is an adjustment to be made, it might need to be in the ranking system. Y’all make Americans feel like we have done a poor job but these Europeans fought their hearts out and are damned good. I claimed early in the week that there was no underdog thing but y’all laughed at me. That will change one day.”
Phil Mickelson, especially, and Tiger Woods were two flops and they joined in behind their captain.
“I don’t think we’ll be favourites next time no matter what the rankings might say and hopefully we’ll play like they have,” said Mickelson.
“Why don’t you market us as underdogs?” growled Tiger.
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