McIlroy can be a contender, insists Pádraig
No matter how talented you are or how much time you spend trying to perfect a game that’s as convoluted as a 20,000 piece jigsaw, God will feed a few vital pieces of the puzzle to the dog when you aren’t looking.
“This is great thing about golf,” Harrington says, during a discussion on Rory McIlroy’s undoubted ability to take the pressure and perform on the PGA Tour this year. “Look at all the players, everybody is given something but they have a weakness somewhere else. You will not find a player that’s complete. They have all got real strengths and an area of weakness.”
How good would Harrington be if he could drive the ball as well as McIlroy? How many tournaments wins would McIlroy have on his CV by now if he had Harrington’s mesmeric ability to hole putts under pressure?
Harrington is too diplomatic to say McIlroy is an average putter at the highest levels. But he points out that as the most exciting European player for a generation, the 20-year-old from Co Down is rightfully considered good enough to challenge Tiger Woods for the world No 1 ranking any day now.
“What’s great about Rory is he knows where he is weakest and he is working on it,” Harrington says.
It’s McIlroy’s strengths that impress Harrington – his fearlessness with the driver and his ability to find another gear when the pressure is on.
Dismissing fears for the Ulster starlet as he takes on the big guns on the PGA Tour this year, Harrington said: “You are looking at a guy who is No 9 in the world (at the time of writing he is 10th). You could genuinely theorise that he is going to become world No 1 while Tiger is still here. He could be a contender.”
Harrington himself has still set his sights sky high by targeting victory in all four majors before the turns 39 in August.
But golf needs young guns to fill the void that will eventually be left by Woods and while Harrington’s top level career is entering its final decade, McIlroy has the potential to reign over world golf for many years to come.
“Nobody was thinking when I turned pro at 24 that I was going to be world No 1. But it is valid hype for Rory,” Harrington insists. “Sure it brings pressure with it, but he loves that.
“You can look at the guys who are one-time major winners and they spend the rest of their life trying to justify it. But I think Rory is someone who is young and embraces the idea. At the end of the day, he has always been the big fish and the hype has always been there.’’
McIlroy has decided to join the PGA Tour because he wants to test himself against the best and contend for majors.
He’s already said he wants to close the gap on world No 2 Phil Mickelson this year before taking down Woods in 2011.
Harrington loves the fact McIlroy relishes being the man they want to beat.
“He wants to be that,” Harrington says. “He has got the ability and I think he is loving it.
“His biggest asset is his attitude. He really does love playing golf. He enjoys it. He plays with such enthusiasm.
“It looks like he is trying to rip his drive down the tightest line on every single hole. I’d say poor JP (Fitzgerald, his caddie) would nearly have to break that driver to stop him hitting it.
“He sees nothing else but those lines and I don’t think he ever will. I think he’s a great driver of the ball, that’s his asset.”
Harrington believes he himself has a survival instinct on the green, an ability to will the ball into the hole, that is a product of his upbringing on the severe slopes of Stackstown Golf Club in the foothills of the Dublin mountains.
“If you are going to be putting from 20 feet on every hole, you are going to be a bad putter. If you want to be a good putter, miss a lot of greens and you will be a great putter. Seve Ballesteros is the perfect example. You do it out of necessity.
“You don’t have to become a great putter overnight. Everybody who is bad putter wants to find a swing key that turns them from having 34 putts to having 28 putts. What happened to 33.9 putts and so on? The gradual improvement. Rory is young enough that if he sticks at it, it will happen.”
Harrington agrees that he has a “talent” on the greens, an instinct that helps him put the ball away, like a top soccer striker.
“I played for years hitting seven, eight or nine greens a round and a lot of players should get tired of putting from four feet, six feet and eight feet. I am quite happy to go on for a whole round knocking in their putts consistently and to do it for a week. It is stressful.
“Look at me over a two footer. I will take loads of time lining up. People think I am standing over six footers thinking I am going to hole it. No. I am thinking I am going to miss. They are stressful. Your golf course determines a huge amount. It didn’t matter who the golfer was, you couldn’t keep the ball on the fairways in Stackstown in the summer. The fairways ran off and you couldn’t hit more than six or seven greens.
“The greens were difficult to chip on so you had to have a really good chipping and no putt in Stackstown was in any way easy. So it was all about missing in the right place and getting up and down from the right place.
“Bad putters are guys who hit the ball well. It is a fact. If you hit the ball to 20 feet, it doesn’t matter how good a putter you are, you are going to two putt nearly every green and you are going to walk off thinking you are rubbish. A good putter is somebody who hits the golf ball inside eight feet.”
“The stat that counts most is how many times in the course of a round are you hitting your first putt from inside eight or 10 feet. On a given day you will hole 90% of those putts, sometimes more.
“If you hit it to 20 feet 18 times, you are likely to shoot 2 under par. If you hit inside 10 feet, nines time for par and nine times for birdie, you will probably shoot five or six under par.”
And with that he was off – to work on his driving.
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