Pádraig not worried about the ‘other guys’
There is now no papering over the fact that considerable tension has built up between the top two Americans, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, while Pádraig Harrington who, along with Sergio Garcia, is the keyman in the European side, is unwilling to talk about the poor form of so many of his team-mates.
Woods and Mickelson have qualified for the US team for the World Cup in December, but they won’t be there as a unit. One or other may go, certainly not both. Nor will they be partners at any stage of the Ryder Cup according to American insiders. Sensing blood, a journalist asked US captain Curtis Strange during the PGA if he would pair the two in either foursomes or fourball. Strange replied: “I don’t know.” Team member Davis Love III was asked on Sunday if he envisaged a Woods Mickelson partnership at The Belfry. “I doubt it,” he snapped.
Furthermore, it won’t have helped Strange’s peace of mind that while the top five places in the PGA were filled by Americans, only one of the quintet, Tiger Woods, is a member of his side. The vibes on the European side of the fence are no more encouraging. Harrington is never one to avoid a topic, but he really didn’t want to know when asked about how poorly so many Europeans are playing at the moment.
“I’m not looking around me at anybody else,” he said. “You let everybody look after themselves. The matches are still six weeks away and the fact that somebody is playing well now doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll play well in six weeks and it’s the other way around as well. I’m not going to worry about the other guys. Let me worry about my injuries and myself.” Harrington headed off yesterday for the Sahalee Country Club in Seattle for this week’s NEC World Championship, hoping against hope that the ankle and neck injuries that impaired his performance in the PGA will have cleared up sufficiently to enable him make a meaningful challenge.
“My neck is definitely improved,” he said at the end of Sunday’s closing 72 that saw him miss out on his fourth top 10 finish of the season by a single shot. Instead he tied for 17th to win
$72, 000. “I would have been chuffed at making another top ten, that was my goal before going out today but I have to be happy given that I honestly thought my tournament was over after the first hole on Saturday.” He will work with his sports physio, 42-year-old Australian Dale Richardson, throughout this week and if necessary will go into the NEC. Richardson insists there is no danger of long term damage and Harrington is happy to take the 42-year-old Australian at his word.
“Dale is always keen to get players playing through these things and working things out,” said Harrington. “I’ll probably have a practice round on Wednesday. I don’t want to have to swing any more than I have to with a bad neck. I’m more worried about the swing in that the neck problem is creating bad habits.”
Dale Richardson may now become one of the most important members of his backroom team. “I advise my clients on everything, diet, physical condition, the lot,” he says. “I’ve got a Masters in sports science and I would say I was a special golf practitioner. I don’t work with other sports. I’ve been doing golf since 1989. My brother Peter is with me and he does physio, acupuncture and so on. We have about 25 guys that we work with and we are very busy.” Quite clearly, Richardson takes it as a personal affront when one of his men goes down as dramatically as Harrington did on Saturday, but he suspects that his client was to some extent the architect of his own misfortune. “It’s the first time this has come up with one of my clients,” he stressed. “Pádraig did something the night before it happened that was a silly thing to do. It destabilised his mid-back and neck region. He went to an arcade and played a game and that was dumb. These guys are like a finely tuned machine, so if they go and do something else, they’re not ready for it.” Harrington goes on from Seattle to Munich for the BMW International, then takes off the week of the Ebel Swiss Masters before taking in the Linde German Masters in the build up to the American Express World Championship at Mount Juliet followed by the Ryder Cup.
