Home win is Pádraig’s goal

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON sits down at the beginning of each season and lays out his goals for the following 12 months.

Such ambitions are usually kept private but yesterday he freely admitted that winning a world championship in his native country is among those aims.

Harrington is among the star studded field for the American Express World Golf Championship at Mount Juliet - where he spent several happy years as tournament professional - and there is nobody the Irish galleries would prefer to see walk off with the first prize of €979, 113 on Sunday.

“It’s very high on my list of priorities to win a world event and probably even higher to win an event in Ireland,” Harrington said.

“I suppose they’d be equal where my goals are concerned. I’d hate to go through my career without winning an Irish Open although I could probably get away with it if I won a major professional event in Ireland.

“Yeah, it would mean a few ticks off the goals if I could win a tournament in Ireland.

“It doesn’t motivate me that Darren [Clarke] has won two world titles, Tiger has 10 or something, but it’s always a plus when Europeans or people close to you win events because I know Darren’s game, I know him, and if I see him win, it’s easier to visualise myself doing so because I know what it takes to win.

“It’s always a positive when a player you’re familiar with wins a world title, a major or something like that.”

But playing at home can be a doubled edged sword.

“There is added pressure on home soil but at this stage we should be getting used to it. We have a lot of events here now. I’ve been wondering if there is more pressure to win a world event rather than an Irish Open.

“My desire to win either would be similar so I’d be putting the same level of pressure on myself. But there again, I’m living with that and learning to deal with it through experience.”

Whereas Clarke captured the European Open at The K-Club in 2001, Harrington has generally failed to make an impression at home.

He threw away the European Open in 2002 when he knocked his second to the 18th into the lake allowing Michael Campbell to take the crown.

He than ran up for the Irish Open in 2001 at Fota and at Baltray this year, without being in serious contention to win on either occasion.

Accordingly, his incentive to rectify the situation during the next four days could hardly be greater. Having enjoyed a hugely successful Ryder Cup, in normal circumstances he would have been coming here on a high but he now fears his inability to make an impression in the Heritage tournament last week has blunted some of the edge he gained by winning the German Masters followed immediately by his heroics at Oakland Hills.

“Last week probably helped me to get over the jet lag more quickly and also to get over the Ryder Cup.

“So the Ryder Cup is a little in the back of my mind. Obviously meeting a few of my teammates and a few of the US players brings back the memories and there is a lot of talk about it. But this week is another very big week and it’s my job to concentrate on it. I have no regrets about playing last week although I obviously wasn’t there to finish 37th.

“It’s possible that I will be too tired, I could have done with the week off but I don’t regret playing, I regret not finishing very well.”

Harrington said it was interesting it was the non-playing US players who wished to speak about the Ryder Cup rather than those who flopped so surprisingly at Oakland Hills.

“You’re not going to have an analysis with the US players who were on the team,” he said.

“The others want to know about the funnier side, the 10 things that appeared on the internet they need to change, stuff like the US need Fiji and to annex the South Africans, that Europe shouldn’t have any players educated in the States or married to an American woman, stuff like that.

“I think they also wanted to ban anybody with dyed hair playing for Europe. It’s very light-hearted.

“The way I see it, we’re setting the US team up to come back with a bang. Every time we win, we’re pushing them, they’ll come back feeling like they’re the underdogs and overachieve and that’s going to put us in a lot of trouble.”

Harrington doesn’t drink alcohol, bar a swig or two from a champagne bottle after successful Ryder Cups, but he was still in the thick of the celebrations last week.

He and his cousin Joey Harrington, the hugely successful Detroit Lions’ quarterback, joined revellers in an Irish bar near the team’s hotel.

“His team had also won that day so he, too, had something to celebrate,” said Padraig.

“It was unbelievable in there. It was very noisy but I think Lee Westwood would have stayed the whole night except that he would have needed a loudspeaker to be heard over the din.”

And with the end of one campaign, the focus turns to The K-Club in 2006. And the captaincy?

Harrington seems to be hedging his bets stressing that: “Bernhard Langer was a great captain this time and I really enjoyed playing under him. I’ve always admired Bernhard and he lived up to expectations. I have never seen anyone who was so self-assured, so self-confident in himself without being in any way cocky. He’d be a great captain in 2006.

“But there are other people who deserve to be captain, people who have done a lot for the European Tour. It would be to our advantage to keep Bernhard but I also believe it should be passed around.”

As for this week, Padraig believes Tiger Woods is a strong favourite.

“It would be foolish to think otherwise. I think his form is coming back and he has something to prove when people are saying he’s not going to win another stroke play event.”