Standing up to golfing god

FOR many golf fans in the United States, the first image of Pádraig Harrington was delivered in an excruciatingly methodical way.

Singles Sunday of the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, and with an improbable American rally all but complete, Harrington stood in the fairway of the 17th hole and looked over his approach into the dogleg left par-4. Then he walked... and walked... and walked... perhaps as much as 175 yards to green, only to turn around and walk back to his ball, after which he took another minute before finally swinging.

It was maddening to overzealous fans who wanted nothing more than the official OK to celebrate this incredible victory. Harrington was seen as an annoyance, a man in the way of their fun.

Ten years later, it could be argued that he is viewed as a saviour of sorts, the long-awaited fighting spirit that many golf fans have insisted has been dead and gone from the game during this Tiger Woods era.

As Woods has seized control of professional golf – winning the majority of his tournaments, becoming so big that TV builds its programmes around him and the PGA Tour establishes guidelines that never before existed – there is a section of the fandom that has shook its collective heads and asked: “Just where are the rivals who will stand up to the man?”

Whereas Jack Nicklaus got taken down more than once in majors by Lee Trevino and Tom Watson, and to a lesser degree by the likes of Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Johnny Miller, and even Seve Ballesteros, an increasing number of voices have suggested that Ernie Els and Vijay Singh, Retief Goosen and Sergio Garcia, Adam Scott and Phil Mickelson, to name a few, aren’t in that same class, that their collective spirits have been broken by Woods.

For reasons that are felt, but impossible to quantify, Harrington doesn’t fit that mould.

Certainly talented, Harrington isn’t gifted with any more ability than the men mentioned above, but there’s a good sense that he possesses twice the grit that all of those combined. In the face of a possible meltdown at the 72d hole he won the 2007 Open Championship and he successfully defended the next summer, despite a nagging injury that almost led him to withdraw. He brushed aside Sergio Garcia at the 2008 PGA Championship to join Els and Mickelson as the only three-time major winners in the Woods era.

Yet one could argue that what elevated Harrington to an even higher stature in golf fans’ minds here in the US was a second-place finish in last week’s Bridgestone Invitational. Three ahead of Woods at the start, Harrington got caught and passed, but instead of folding like so many accordion-like foes have done, the Irishman gritted his teeth and walked to the 16th tee one stroke ahead.

It is here that the infamous “on-the-clock” misfortune occurred and one will never know whether Harrington would have held on or not had they not been pushed. What we do know is this: Harrington handled the situation beautifully and refused to blame officials, unlike Woods.

“I reacted poorly,” Harrington said of the way he made triple-bogey in the wake of the slow-play warning.

When told of Harrington’s acceptance of blame, the rules official in question, John Paramor, nodded respectfully. “He’s class, always had been,” said Europe’s top rules expert.

The suspicion is, American golf fans have always suspected as much, but right now are becoming enamoured with the man. And for good reason.

There is easy-to-feel dignity to Harrington – he’s off the charts in “likeability,” the marketing gurus would say – and that shined through at the 91st PGA Championship here at Hazeltine National GC. Buoyed, no doubt, by the way in which Harrington had handled a controversy at Bridgestone, and by a second straight week of refusing to buckle against the best Woods could throw at him, the Irishman was embraced by the fans.

He noticed, too.

“I get the impression that there’s a lot of people who are cheering me on, wanting me to push (Woods) along,” the Dublin man said. “But they still want Tiger to win.”

Who are we to debate Harrington, but as he began the final round of the PGA Championship two behind Woods, it could have been suggested that the fans were hoping to see the Irishman not only “push” the world’s greatest player, but beat him.

Maybe because they are tired of the same old act. Or maybe because they are thrilled to have back an old friend – someone who will actually stand up and produce a good golf fight.