Write off Harrington at your peril
Even after his latest hammering at the hands of the golfing gods in Connecticut on Sunday, where he closed with the second worst round of his professional career — a 10-over-par 80 to finish second last in the Travelers Championship — the overwhelming temptation to dismiss the three-time Major winner as yesterday’s man is tempered by a gnawing doubt.
Since he won the most recent of his three Majors in August 2008, Harrington has played 136 events on the PGA and the European Tours and won none of them.
Yes, he’s picked up three trophies, taking the Irish PGA, the Iskandar Johor Open on the Asian Tour and last year’s PGA Grand Slam of Golf in Bermuda.
But he’s yet to get over the line over 72 holes against a truly top class field.
Add to that his recent decision to take up a belly putter and the soon to be banned anchored method and it would seem foolhardy to expect Harrington to become a Major winner for a fourth time.
No one, not even the man himself, expects the Dubliner to be the player who was arguably the best on the planet for the guts of two years.
“Five years is a long time in golf,” Harrington said shortly before last year’s Masters. “A lot of can change.”
Written off as a Major contender in one national newspaper in early 2007, Harrington is no stranger to criticism and accepts it as part and parcel of the job.
There are still two Majors to go before he goes five years without winning one of the tournaments that are now his obsession and yet he will continue to draw flak for his performances in the run-of-the-mill Tour events he clearly uses to prepare himself for the big ones.
Like the Miami Heat forward LeBron James, constantly questioned for his relative “greatness” when compared to the likes of Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan until last week’s back-to-back NBA Championship triumph, Harrington should only be judged by his performances on the biggest of all stages.
He betrayed that mindset last Sunday at Merion, when he left the US Open after a 21st place finish and said: “I’d like to play the US Open every week.”
At the age of 41, it remains to be seen how many more chances the affable Dubliner will have to add to his Major haul, but Irish and European golf owes him the benefit of the doubt at least.
The irony of Harrington’s situation is an eternal truth about youth and experience.
As Vincent Van Gogh once said: “It is a pity that, as one gradually gains experience, one loses one’s youth.”
Harrington wishes he was still “young and fearless, like Rory”.
“As you get older you gain experience but you also have mental scarring,” he said last year. “You get the edges knocked off you a bit but that doesn’t mean to say the experienced player can’t be as good as a fearless player.
“He can. But he is just a different player. Some players have got better with age, others haven’t. But what happens to everyone is that they change.”
Harrington is not averse to change. In fact, he’s gone out of his way to make sure that nothing remains untouched. Those who dismiss him as yesterday’s man will point to his break up with Bob Torrance two years ago as the last straw.
Then there was last month’s surprise decision to take the ultimate step with his putting and take up the belly putter.
Just over two years ago, he sat in the newly unveiled ‘Harrington Room’ at Stackstown and when asked if he feared he was subliminally admitting that his Major career was over, he shook his head.
“I always tell the story of playing a practice round with Nick Faldo. It must have been close to 2000, maybe 2002 or so, and his competitive career had probably come to an end.
“I played a practice round with him, nine holes, and he really grinded. At the end of nine holes I said to him, ‘you were really grinding there’ and he said, ‘yeah, I’d love to win just one more’.
“Major winners always want one more and they think that one more will actually make them happy. But the one more won’t make them happy; they want two more then.”
Whatever about his putting woes, his lack of recent wins and infuriating habit of following up two good rounds with two bad ones, we owe it to Harrington to believe that he will get one final chance to put his neck on the line.
Unlike Rocky, whose “whole life was a million-to-one shot,” Harrington’s odds of another crack at glory are still distinctly better.
There might be 457 days to go before Paul McGinley skippers Europe in the 2014 Ryder Cup but the Dublin man will be making a pleasant phone call long before he has to get on the blower to his three wildcards.
As part of its efforts to boost interest in the event and remind people that the Ryder Cup ticket ballot closes next month, on July 22, Ryder Cup Europe has announced details of a priceless “Golden Ticket” draw.
All you have to do is apply for a ticket (not forgetting to upload the mandatory photograph) and you could win the free entry “Golden Ticket” which gives “exclusive privileges.”
McGinley will phone the winner personally to break the news and inform them that they have won a special chaperoned clubhouse visit, reserved seats at the first tee, a pin flag that will be signed by the European team and captain as well as European team wear, lunch in a hospitality facility and a behind-the-scenes guided tour of the media centre.
McGinley said: “I think it’s a fantastic idea to enable someone to experience the best elements of The Ryder Cup — from the unique atmosphere of the first tee, to the clothes the team will wear on the day and, of course, getting to see inside the clubhouse.”
The official ticket application process is now open on the Ryder Cup website www.rydercup.com/europe/2014tickets.
It hasn’t exactly been seven years of bad luck for Darren Clarke (pictured) since he sportingly refused to take advantage of a doctored lie in the rough at Carton House in a Monday finish to the 2006 Irish Open.
Well-meaning “leprechauns” had trampled down the rough around Clarke’s ball overnight and he opted not to take advantage of a better lie and chipped out rather than go for the ninth green when leading the event by two strokes at the time.
“I don’t feel comfortable with it,” he told Swedish referee Mikael Eriksson. “I’m just going to do what I had planned to do last night and chip it out. Then my conscience is clear.”
He was leading by a stroke with three holes to go but bogeyed the 16th and then duffed his third at the last when he needed to get up and down for birdie to force a play-off with eventual champion Thomas Bjorn.
Sweden’s Peter Hedblom was one of those to pay tribute to Clarke for his sportsmanship that day, commenting: “Darren will be repaid for that. It might not be this time but he will get his reward. It’s good karma.”
A stellar Ryder Cup performance at The K Club, just weeks after the death of his wife might have been the highlight of his career but five years later, good karma made another appearance as the then 42-year old won the British Open at Sandwich. The odds on some good karma for Clarke at Carton House are calculated by the bookies at 150/1.
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