Pressure on Harrington to end title drought
Harrington, without a tournament win since August 2008, returns to action this week in the St Jude Classic in Memphis, Tennessee, having spent time in Barbados on a family holiday recuperating from minor knee surgery.
He will have noted a few salient points as he lay in the sun, not least that he is outside the nine automatic Ryder Cup qualifying spots, that he has fallen outside the world top ten and that the limelight is being stolen by players shooting unbelievably low numbers.
Ricky Barnes went round Jack Nicklaus’s formidable Muirfield Village course at the weekend in ten under par 62. Graeme McDowell stormed through the field in the Wales Open over the 2010 Ryder Cup course at Celtic Manor in Sunday’s final round in 63. While this was enough to earn the Portrush man his fifth European Tour title by three strokes, Welshman Rhys Davies actually went one better on the day!
On top of that, there was little more admirable than the manner in which Luke Donald, runner-up in the BMW PGA and winner in Madrid in the two previous weeks, battled back from an opening 75 in Wales to finish 3rd on his own by twice shooting 65 over the weekend. Throw in Lee Westwood’s victory in the 2009 season ending Dubai World Championship and his subsequent collection of the European Tour’s Race to Dubai order of merit; Ian Poulter’s Accenture World Match Play triumph and the dramatic fashion in which Rory McIlroy stormed to his first success on the PGA US Tour at Quail Hollow.
And it isn’t just the high profile names that are garnering the headlines. Look at the manner in which Italian brothers Francesco and Edoardo Molinari captured the World Cup along with the exciting developments of Rhys Davies and Alvaro Quiros.
Had it not been for embarrassing revelations about his private life, last week would have been a good one for Colin Montgomerie as he watched McDowell and Rose stake virtually undeniable claims for inclusion in his Ryder Cup team.
He always wanted McDowell in his side because of his capacity to make the perfect foursomes/fourball partner for McIlroy. Now that he has won so impressively over the cup course, the Ulster man’s place is guaranteed and he will almost certainly prove a valuable member of Monty’s side, bearing in mind that he performed very well on his debut two years ago at Valhalla where he beat Stewart Cink in the singles.
Rose also performed creditably on his first appearance in 2008 (he defeated Phil Mickelson by 3 and 2 in their singles encounter). He hadn’t done much before the weekend but the manner in which he closed out the tournament and left Mickelson, Tiger Woods, the two Rickies, Fowler and Barnes, and others in his wake was hugely impressive and very encouraging from a European viewpoint.
Rhys Davies, a former British Boys champion, has also done amazingly well over the past few weeks and it now looks as if Wales will have one of their own in the Ryder Cup when it comes to their country for the first time.
While he is clearly a very useful all-round player, Davies is particularly adept at getting the ball into the hole from almost any range, an invaluable attribute in the Ryder Cup.
It will be fascinating to see how Harrington reacts to all of this in Memphis and more importantly in next week’s US Open at Pebble Beach.
Given the form of so many rivals for places at Celtic Manor, he needs to click pretty quickly if he is to claim one of those automatic nine places.
One last Ryder Cup thought and it’s a negative one this time. Sergio Garcia, whom many would have regarded as a ‘banker’, is nowhere to be seen. He missed the cut in Madrid the other week and even before then stated publicly that he couldn’t expect a pick from Montgomerie. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Henrik Stenson is also quickly tumbling down the rankings and German Martin Kaymer has failed to make his expected impact.
The main attraction on the European Tour this week is the Estoril Open de Portugal which returns to the Robert Trent Jones Junior designed Penha Longa Hotel Spa & Golf Resort. Europe’s top players will return to find a fresh and contemporary lay-out after the completion of extensive refurbishments to the golf course. The Irish in the field are Darren Clarke, Damien McGrane, Simon Thornton and Gary Murphy. Whereas the Portuguese event carries a modest prize fund of a €1m, the winner of the St Jude Classic in Memphis will receive a similar amount while there’s an overall purse of $5.6m (€4.6m). Padraig Harrington, of course, will be there along with Rory McIlroy, who again displayed his talents by finishing 10th in the Memorial tournament, in the last tournament before Pebble Beach. The other leading Europeans involved are Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Robert Karlsson.
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