Harrington: I was happy to do it the hard way at Carnoustie

CAN you imagine anyone being described or known as “The Bounce Across the Bridge Champion?”

Well, Pádraig Harrington believes that would have been his fate had luck favoured him after he hit a wayward drive off the final tee in last year’s Open Championship at Carnoustie.

When people tell Harrington, as they do almost every day, that he was unlucky that his ball didn’t roll across the bridge over the Barry Burn instead of dropping into the water, he has a ready answer.

“I like to point out that I was the luckiest golfer ever because if it bounced across the bridge and I hit it up around the green and made five and won the Open, people would have described me as ‘The Bounce Across the Bridge champion’,” he states.

“By going in the water and taking six and having to win it in a play-off, I proved I was the champion on the day. I gave up the Open on the 18th, I got a second chance, and took my chance. So it doesn’t take any sheen off it at all.”

There has never been a day like it in the history of Irish golf and Pádraig, as is his wont, was happy to chat last week about the agony and ecstasy he shared in almost equal measure until the title was finally his.

For instance, there was the delightful way in which his son Paddy asked if they could put ladybirds in the Claret Jug as soon as he laid eyes on the famous trophy. And the youngster duly got his wish! “Ladybirds have gone in there, yes, definitely,” says Pádraig. “And it wasn’t that he was fussed about it but I insisted that we had to do it because he had said it. But back a moment to the balls going in the Burn… there were two situations. When I hit the second ball in the water, which would have been the third shot, I just died there.

“I was embarrassed. The way I felt about it was that I had just totally choked. I didn’t mind the tee shot, you can always hit a bad shot. The second shot, though, I was gutted. I felt I had thrown away the Open. Ronan, my caddie, did an incredible job dragging me back out of the hole and just spurring me on. He was fantastic since he also thought I had just lost The Open but he never let on. He did a tremendous job of bringing me back, as you can see from the pitch and the putt that saved the day. I was back in the zone.

“And I turned around and my son came running onto the green and he looked at me like I had won The Open. I was a champion in his eyes and I walked off the green feeling that way. If I could get my son to run onto every green from now on…”

The man Harrington eventually pipped in the play-off that day was the Spaniard Sergio Garcia. Even though they’ve been Ryder Cup teammates since 2002 and played together many times, they have never been that close. There haven’t been words between them or anything like that, but those that have been exchanged have been of a perfunctory nature. However, since the events of July 22 last, a certain air of unease existed between them. The fact that, 12 months on, they still haven’t been able to discuss what happened tells its own story.

“I have no idea what was going through his head,” says Harrington. “I would not be broaching that subject, personally. I’m sure he doesn’t want to sit down over dinner and have a chat about The Open in 2007.”

And yet, being the kind of guy he is, Pádraig did feel compassion for Garcia after his winning putt.

“When I turned around and saw Sergio’s face, I realised that somebody had lost, and yes, as high as I was, I did feel terribly for him,” he admits. “Maybe selfishly, I was looking at him and thinking, it could have been me.

“A major is a major. Sergio knows himself, and it’s the same with any tournament, it’s when you win one that you realise that the losses aren’t as big a deal. I’m sure when he goes and wins one, he’ll look back at the Open and say, I gained some experience in 2007 that helped me.”

Given how reticent Garcia has been about that occasion, we may never know what was in his mind as the pair crossed paths after the Irishman had driven into the Barry Burn at the 18th and the Spaniard himself was heading down the 17th. Did Sergio flash a little smile? If so, what did it mean? Pádraig will wonder without ever fully knowing for many a day to come! “He obviously had a little grin and to me, it read like, what are you doing over here?” he muses. “But who knows what it meant? I was trying to give off the impression of, you know, it’s business as usual. So what if I’m out here, I’m still going to hit the shot from here and I’m going to play golf and I don’t care that it looks silly that I’ve just hit it this far offline. You’re trying to create an I’m-not-bothered-by-this attitude. Yeah, I think the look meant, what are you doing over here?”

Every day comes round, they say, and next Thursday the 37-year-old Dubliner begins his defence of a trophy that had only once before been won by an Irishman and even that had been a full 60 years previously, courtesy of Portrush man Fred Daly.

Harrington hasn’t done a whole lot since but he is clearly more energised by the major championships than the regular events.

“In a major, you just feel like you have to have a good week and be there for the final nine holes, because you know the field is going to come back,” he points out. “Geoff Ogilvy says it all the time. He wishes he could play US Opens all the time because he feels like nobody’s going to run away from him. It allows him to be more patient and I would agree with that.”

IT MAY have escaped people’s attention that Harrington played one of the great final Open Championship rounds for 17 holes at Carnoustie. He was a superb six under par standing on the 18th tee but then came the two infamous visits to the Barry Burn, resulting in a double bogey six that looked to have handed the Claret Jug back to Garcia. So, on reflection, was he disappointed and frustrated at having spoiled so much good work by the way he played the 18th? “I got the trophy, that’s the way I look at it,” he retorts. “My caddie said to me afterwards that it was the best he had ever seen me play. Everything about it was comfortable. I was in the zone. I was playing within myself. One of the startling things about the whole round is that I didn’t hole any putts. Good putts were struck all day that didn’t drop.

“I only thought of Jean Van de Velde as I was going down the fairway. He took seven and I could still make six. But it’s a feeling of letting people down. If you were completely selfish or had that inner confidence, it wouldn’t bother you what kind of golf shot you hit.

“But that’s our nature. There’s no question I felt embarrassed about it — not my tee shot, I was blasé about that because I felt I could still win. But the second was really like a punch in the stomach, and I felt, oh, I can’t believe I’ve just thrown it away and messed it up. What’s everybody going to be saying sort of stuff.

“I will try to do everything the same next week. I’m defending the Irish PGA at the European Club links, Dr Bob Rotella will stay in my house again, I’m attending the Golf Writers dinner on Tuesday night, if I knew which socks I wore, I’d wear the same pair again.

“You’ve got to realise, though, that circumstances do change. Last year, I didn’t go to the putting green until Thursday morning. At Muirfield, where I also had a great chance, I probably spent four hours a day on the putting green because I wasn’t putting well. In terms of recreating what I did at the Open, I try to recreate it every week, that discipline and the way I went about it. You look at your best event and ask, what did I do there, how did I do that?

“But it’s not a situation that I must eat my dinner at 6.30 and have spaghetti bolognaise because that’s what I did on the Monday night on the week I won the Open. It’s more a situation of getting prepared and comfortable, that you’re not panicking about getting everything covered and be patient and play your game”.

Fully aware that there will be extra demands on his time because he is the defending champion, Harrington has been working on keeping the outside and inside pressures as low as possible.

He asserts: “No matter what happens, I will always be the 2007 Open champion. If you don’t play well, they don’t take it off you for the year before. That’s a conscious effort to, in some way, down play the significance of going back to defend. Playing with Angel Cabrera when he was defending his US Open, I saw how much more that week meant to him. He missed the cut but that was no reflection on what he achieved the year before. I’m not denying that it will mean more to me but I have to make it feel like a regular event.

“I won the Open through experience and a lot of hard work to get where I am in the game. When I got my chance, I took it. Over the years, a number of wins and a number of seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths enabled me to see what was happening. Throughout the week. I made a lot of really good decisions. I was tremendously patient because I know in a major it really does come down to the last nine holes. The feeling of winning a major is so special that you’d like to play a major every week. I want to win the Open more than I ever did before but all the majors have gone up a notch for me now.”

On reflection, Pádraig believes he got things completely right mentally when it came to filling in the time after he holed out on the 72nd green until Garcia completed his round.

“I was sitting in the recorder’s hut watching his putt telling myself I was going to win the Open,” he says. “Not once did I sit there going, I need him to miss, I want him to miss, none of those negative thoughts. I just sat there and said, ‘I’m going to win the Open’. I’m just ringing it through my head: ‘I’m going to win the Open’. Once I walked off the green with my son, I knew I was going to win The Open.”