Will Fota be venue where success-starved Pádraig finally finds mojo?

It was only pro-am day at Fota yesterday but already the support for Pádraig Harrington was palpable.

Hundreds watched as he drove off at 9.30am with his amateur partners Aidan Cawley, Brendan Mullins and Michael Cawley and that number had swollen appreciably by the time the group reached the halfway stage in front of the Fota clubhouse around noon.

Listening to that fan base following Harrington, the conversations centred on the Dubliner’s six-year barren spell.

“Could he be finished as a tournament winner?” was the worried question on many lips. The response, more often than not, was a shrug of the shoulders with no one prepared to admit it was a very definite possibility.

Interestingly, the group also wondered why Pádraig was concentrating so heavily on the hugely competitive US PGA Tour and almost entirely ignoring his domestic circuit on this side of the Atlantic.

There appears to be a considerable degree of substance to that view. Harrington has been travelling back and forth to the States with little or no success. He was approaching his greatest days when he captured the Honda and Barclays Classics over there in 2005 and the three majors duly followed. After that, it became a whole lot tougher and since the US PGA at Oakland Hills in 2008, his only victory has come in the low-key Iskander Johor Open in Malaysia.

Accordingly, there is a widely held view that regular appearances in Europe, where his prospects of success are higher, would inject him with confidence and belief that he can still get the job done. Clearly, and as positive as ever, he doesn’t see things in that light and has adopted a philosophy – that may, of course, be very well founded – that if Jack Nicklaus could win the Masters at 46, that Miguel-Angel Jimenez is still bringing home the silverware having turned the half century, his own mark of 42 is not an impediment.

Nevertheless a simpleexamination of the statistics this year shows he has played 11tournaments in the States as against three in Europe, twoof which were staged in South Africa and Asia. Harrington’s record in the States reads as follows:

- Phoenix Open – missed cut

- Pebble Beach pro-am — tied 27th

- Honda Classic — missed cut

- Valspar Championship – 65th

- Arnold Palmer tournament – 67th

- Texas Open – missed cut

- Houston Classic – missed cut

- New Orleans Classic – 67th

- Wells Fargo Championship – missed cut

- Byron Nelson Classic – 22nd

- St Jude Classic – 65th.

A few of those results were particularly disappointing given that scores early on suggested the long-awaited revival was on the cards. In Houston, he opened with a 69 only to take 10 shots more on the following day and missed the cut. In the Byron Nelson, he was right up there with the best after rounds of 68, 68 and 66 but a closing 74 spoiled his chances. Most recently in the St Jude Classic in Memphis, he was nicely poised after 36 holes having shot 68 and 67 before a 79 on the third day spoiled everything.

It all means Pádraig stands a lowly 179th on the PGA Tour money list with €118,920 and 181st on the FedEx Cup points.

European Tour record

- Volvo Champions – 5th

- Abu Dhabi championship – missed cut

- BMW PGA – 61st

That leaves him 103rd on the Race to Dubai order of merit with €129,348 and currently 233rd on the world rankings and not a factor in Ryder Cup reckoning, as a player at any rate. That means he has little chance of qualifying for the lucrative and points-heavy world championship events and only gets into the Open Championship as a former winner until the age of 60 and the US PGA for another four years on the strength of his victory in 2008.

All of this might depress a lot of people. That doesn’t appear to be the case with Pádraig, however. “I’m fitter and stronger than I’ve ever been at the moment. I’ve maintained everything I need to compete.”

His love for playing the game was amply demonstrated in his own words when he said: “if I wasn’t playing a tournament here, I’d be out playing golf somewhere.” And that was amply reflected in the manner in which he supported his pro-am partners Michael Cawley, the recently appointed chairman of Fáilte Ireland; Aidan Cawley and Brendan Mullins.

Pádraig is regarded as unquestionably the most popular pro-am partner in the game and you saw why yesterday. Not only did he help his group with their games and chatted freely and amicably but he also kitted them out in his brand-new Dunnes Stores golf wear!

The ardent hope now is that the feel-good factor generated by the magnificence of the Fota venue, the return to the county of his beloved father and former Cork footballer Paddy and the buzz invariably generated by the week of the Irish Open, will inspire him to the heights that landed him the title seven years ago.

Harrington won three majors in the space of 15 months (after he won the Irish Open in 2007). And that should never be forgotten.