Finding Padraig through rain and mud

IT wasn’t a very pleasant day at City West. The Irish rugby team arrived back drenched to the skin after their session down the N7 at Naas.

But the golfers competing in the Asian disaster pro-am hardly noticed. Teams of 31 forked out €10,000 to battle through the rain and the mud and seemed to enjoy every moment of it.

Among them was Padraig Harrington, who had already donated a large proportion of the €225,000 from his recent three-day clinic to the tsunami fund.

But he didn't hesitate when Philip Lynch of Cuisine de France came calling.

Nor did he mind chatting about things past, present and future.

Now the City West course boasts two of the finest finishing holes in all of Irish golf.

The 17th is a par three of 200 yards over water off the back tees. Padraig flushes a four iron to 20 feet.

Talk between him and his caddy, Ronan Flood, turns to 2005.

Flood took over the bag in controversial circumstances from Dave McNeilly last May.

Flood was afforded a year's leave of absence by his employers in AIB and was due to return on June 6 next.

He won't be going back at least for a while yet, anyway.

"I made up my mind to stick with the caddying when Pádraig asked me just after the Ryder Cup," Flood said.

"The bank gave me an extended year of absence so I'm both a caddy and kind of bank manager and I suppose that makes me a little different from most people."

Ronan's girlfriend, Suzie, is a sister of Padraig's wife, Caroline. Flood is a low handicap amateur himself, good enough to qualify for the various championships and knows the game pretty well. Padraig has implicit faith in his advice so in spite of many people's doubts and reservations, it is now as successful and professional a partnership as there is on tour.

It's not the only thing the 33-year-old Dubliner has on his side going into a campaign which may be the most important of his hugely successful career. He left for Malaysia at the weekend safe in the knowledge that everything at home is shipshape. His father, Paddy has been given the all clear in his most recent battle with throat cancer. His young son, Patrick (although destined to be called Paddy), he says, "is mad but in the right kind of way".

Then there's Padraig himself. He's been busy in the gym, concentrating on 'core stability' which aids the strengthening of the back and stomach muscles, balance and stretching. As a result, he now weighs 13 stone having been as low as 11-8 and as high as 15 stone back in those chubby amateur days.

He spent two days last week with his coach, Bob Torrance, tuning the swing after a nine-week absence, the longest 'holiday' by far of any top-class pro and a factor in his slippage from 6th to 8th in the world rankings since the start of the year. Undeterred, he insists: "I'd do my nut in if I didn't have that break."

He sunned himself in Dubai and Barbados but being Padraig Harrington, the clubs were never too far away. Now he's all set for action in Malaysia, California and Florida over the next couple of months.

"I have been away from the tournaments but I've been working hard," he reassures rather unnecessarily.

"I've been easing off for the past few weeks trying to get competitive and that's one of the reasons why I'm out here today, trying to get a little focus back into my game, a little thought into my shots instead of trying to repeat the one swing over and over again."

Harrington was one of the many European Ryder Cuppers who declared in the aftermath of Oakland Hills last September that the next positive step was for one of them to win a major championship. Now the Masters is only two months away and represents as good a chance of any of the four championships of providing a European winner.

"The whole mindset is to play each tournament individually, to have more disciplined routines around the tournaments rather than pitching up doing three hours practice in the afternoon just because I have the afternoon off," he said.

"It will be about playing that week's tournament, not trying to get my swing better for the following week. I need to be more disciplined around the events so that I'm not tiring myself out.

"My schedule is pretty hectic so I'm interested to see how it goes. I'm happy to have more events early on in the year. I need them for the majors. I could be tired by the end of the year but then again there's no harm being tired at that stage. Those I want to play well are the four majors and they go up to the middle of August.

"I'm playing one more event in Europe, the PGA (now BMW) Championship, four more in the US and I'm taking one out of the Middle East and two out of Asia and that means I'm playing a total of three more events in my season which is quite a bit.

"It will be like running the 200 metres and going out hard instead of other years when I tended to go out soft and spare myself," he said.