Practice makes perfect

IF I HAD a euro for every time I was asked over the past few months what was wrong with Pádraig Harrington, and what the hell was he trying to do with his golf swing, my bank account would be in a far healthier condition.

Padraig’s huge band of supporters couldn’t figure out why he felt a need to improve on a game that had earned him three major championships in two years, especially when the process was coinciding with a series of missed cuts and poor finishes that saw his world ranking plummet from third to 17th with little or no sign of his name in the lucrative Fed-Ex Cup and Race to Dubai series on the US and European Tours.

However, he wasn’t for turning and while an opening round of 64 at Firestone Country Club doesn’t prove anything one way or another, he is at least some of the way towards demonstrating that he was right when claiming that sooner or later, he would have the last laugh.

“I found what I was looking for and in the process, I couldn’t have learned more about my game,” he insists. “Unfortunately with golf, you can never predict short-term results, but yes, I believe I am striking the ball better than I ever have in my life. But as we all know, there’s more to the game than that.

“I’m happy and confident and all that, but this would be a great position to be going into at the start of the year. Obviously there’s only one more major to go, so there’s not too many more opportunities, if you know what I mean, to show this. So I am positive going forward and optimistic, but then again I always am.”

Harrington insisted he is not disappointed at the way his season has gone: “If you’re the type of person who is going to get disappointed with results, the professional game is probably not for you. You’ll burn out quickly. The game is based more on how you handle your disappointments and move on from them than anything else.”

Harrington recently failed in his bid to join the immortals who have won the Open Championship three years in a row. Beforehand, however, he pointed out that the hat-trick, desirable and all as it might have been, would pale in comparison to bringing home the Claret Jug more than once some time in the future.

Although he reaches his 38th birthday at the end of this month, he maintains he still had time on his side. And then Tom Watson, at 59, went out and made that very point.

“You look at all of the greats in Europe, they have really won their tournaments in a 20-year period, if it takes them a few years to get there, they have 20 years, and after that, it is burn-out,” he says. “They may come back and win the odd tournament but it’s hard to keep going, especially at the intensity that I put into the game.

“If I was a guy who played 20 events a year, didn’t practice very much and was very easygoing, maybe I could get longer out of it. Physically I’ve carried enough competitive injuries that at some stage they are going to have more of an effect on me. If I want to have a longer career, the only way I can do it is to figure out a way of reducing the time I put into it. We try and do everything we can now and we think tomorrow will never come.”

There were early signs at Akron this week that Harrington is rediscovering the means of shooting low once again. If that is maintained, the inevitable outcome will be wins on a pretty regular scale although he admits he is unsure how he will react once he’s in contention again.

“It’s interesting, I won’t know until I’m there,” he muses. “I’m the sort of guy who likes to have a couple of top-10s and get myself into contention, and then off I go. The major wins are so vivid in my memory that they don’t feel that long ago. I feel like that they were just around the corner. I have good memories of those. That’s the good news for me. I don’t think I’ve forgotten. I think I understand that if I get myself in those positions, that it’s not long ago that I won those three majors, they are such strong memories in my mind that I think I will be well able to cope with the different situations.”

FEW who watched Harrington beat Sergio Garcia and the rest down the stretch at last year’s PGA at Oakland Hills will have forgotten the intensity he showed on that memorable occasion, the almost crazed look that came into his eyes as iron shot after iron shot rained down on the flags. Will it be something similar next week at Hazeltine if he’s in with a chance coming down the stretch?

“That is needed if you want to be in the zone,” he declared. “If you ask any athlete around the world, you can go through them all, when they actually are in the zone, that intensity will show up. You will see it in their eyes.

“You don’t need to be in the zone to win. Michael Jordan was a great man for believing that you just need to be close to the zone and that’s the way it would work. But the intensity bit is when you cross the line from doing everything right to being in the zone and it’s a totally different position.

“The zone is an incredible experience, but this is why the greats, the likes of Tom Watson, don’t win every week. You do need adrenalin, you do need excitement, you do need nerves to get in the zone, to be truly in focus.

“If you do this for 25 years, it’s hard to get nervous when you tee it up in a regular event. You need all that excitement; I know I do, to be in the zone. You’ve got to have the butterflies in order to sharpen your focus. It’s amazing how much your focus sharpens when you’re in the zone. That’s what I look for, if it does become exciting enough and intense enough that you will cross over into the zone and it doesn’t go the other way.”

Hazeltine is housing the PGA for the second time and is set to host the Ryder Cup in 2012. Padraig played the PGA there in 2002, an occasion memorable for the picture shown around the world of his chiropractor Dale Richardson holding him in a wicked looking, vice-like grip as he tried to deal with a serious neck injury.

“2002 was my best result in the PGA up until I won last year,” he recalls. “I finished 17th and I was in a reasonable position going out on Sunday but I couldn’t swing the club because of the pain in my neck. It certainly felt like I couldn’t get my arms past my hip height. I have that picture of Dale and myself on the wall at home and I was looking at it again the other day.

“I remember Hazeltine as a solid enough golf course, a few doglegs, and it was firm. It was difficult to hit the fairways at some of the dogleg holes. It would be more like a US Open-style course. There was heavy rough that required you to be very consistent during the week in terms of hitting fairways, hitting greens. It would suit a good, strong player and consistency is needed. The US PGA see this is the type of golf course that the players want to play on.”