Rotella backs Pádraig to come good
Sports psychologist Dr Bob Rotella has been working with Harrington, 42, for most of the Dubliner’s professional golfing career and has worked with many of the game’s greats. He considers Harrington one of the toughest characters in golf and so, despite the three-time major winner’s slide down the world rankings to his current position of 234, his ability to fight back from adversity means he should never be ruled out from areturn to the highest levels.
“The thing about Pádraig, he’s so upbeat no matter what, he can deal with anything,” Rotella said. “He’s tougher than nails, no question about that. That a big part of sport, his ability to rebound.
“I remember 10 or 12 years ago some reporter told me Tiger was the toughest character he’d ever seen. I said ‘no, he’s really confident and really good but we’ll find out if he’s tough if he ever goes through a real struggle’.
“You don’t find out if a guy’s tough if every week he’s in the top five. To be a great sportsman, you’ve got to go through it, and if you go through it, can you handle it? Pádraig’s got that grit about him. That’s the word we use in the US, grit, and he’s got a lot of it. You know, it a resilience, a love with bouncing back and with fighting. It’s almost like that’s a real kick.
“The world notices it but a lot of times you’re trying to show yourself you’re tough enough to deal with it. That’s kind of a kick too. He certainly is unbelievably resilient and treats people the way you should.”
Rotella added: “I was just talking to him earlier and said that’s why you’ll come back and be on top again and be on top for a while and he’ll probably win one of these (Majors) again.”
That this is a tournament Harrington has won twice already, in 2007 at Carnoustie, and a year later at Birkdale, allied to the fact his ranking means he has missed out on the first two majors of the season, suggests the Open is the most likely place for that return to the winner’s enclosure.
Whether it will happen this year is another matter.
“He’ll win when he’s ready,” Rotella said, “he’s kind of inching there. When he really decides I’ve got everything where I want it and now I’ll let myself play golf. I mean, you see it in every sport. Everyone would like it to be a straight line but I think there’s a side to him that loves it being slow and gradual. I think it makes getting there that much more enjoyable.
“He likes it all to make sense at some level and when it all makes sense, it clicks and he’s on a run.”
A run is something that still eludes Harrington. His last top-10 finishes in Majors came in 2012 with a tie for eighth at the Masters and a tie for fourth in the US Open at Olympic Club, San Francisco. Those performances, though, are still fresh enough in his memory to give him hope.
“Clearly the US Open in 2012 was disappointing having come so close, having had a horrible week on the greens,” he said, “but that only reinforces that it’s well and truly there, you just have to do the right things in your preparation and it will happen.
“What I’m saying now in a Major is I can handle... I’m certainly not going to win one with my B game, or if things aren’t going for me, but I don’t have to have a week where... it’s well within my capabilities to win it, I don’t need somebody else, I can win it if I do my thing, I don’t need anything else.”
So, is Harrington ready? “Well it doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not, I’m here,” he replied. “There’s nothing I can do now, there’s nothing I can do about it bar keep preparing and turn up on Thursday morning.
“You’ve got to take the attitude that you’ve got to turn up mentally ready Thursday through to Sunday so that if your game turns up, they’ll marry up, rather than pressing to get your game ready and all of a sudden you’re mentally ready.
“That’s the great thing in the week of a Major, it’s so much easier to do it.”
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