Pádraig Harrington: I’m excited to be back. It’s like I’m playing my first Masters

Pádraig Harrington will roll back up Magnolia Drive next week having admitted it was a shock to have missed last year’s Masters.

The three-time major champion booked his ticket to the opening major of the year with a long-awaited PGA Tour victory at last month’s Honda Classic in Florida. It dragged Harrington out of a slump that saw him drop to 371st in the Official World Golf Rankings and fail to qualify for Augusta National for the first time since his debut there in 2000.

That play-off win over Daniel Berger was the Dubliner’s first on the PGA Tour since he claimed the 2008 PGA Championship, his third and most recent major. What has followed since has been plenty of tinkering with his swing and putting woes that saw him steadily slide down the rankings.

It meant that Harrington, now aged 43, had for the first time in his career learn how to deal with failure. Now restored to the top 100 at number 83 and heading back to the Masters, he is relishing the opportunity to make the most of his remaining visits to the hallowed ground at Augusta.

“I’m excited to be back. It’s like I’m playing my first Masters. That about sums it all up, doesn’t it? It feels like I didn’t miss one year, it feels like I missed a number of years,” Harrington said before he flew to Texas for this week’s Shell Houston Open.

“I did sit and watch it all last year and it was hard to watch because I do feel like I was competitive in the Masters over the last number of years and so I felt I could have been competitive last year.

“Obviously, I’m in decent form so I’m a little bit more excited abut going back to the Masters and as somebody reminded me, it’s not like I’m going to have that many more Masters going forward, so I’m running out of time.

“A couple of people reminded me that it’s not like I’m 20 years of age and have another 20 Masters ahead of me. I might have, let’s see, five or six or seven in which I might be competitive.”

Harrington has lacked this kind of momentum going into the Masters in recent years, even in 2012, when he finished eighth, his first Masters top 10 since his stellar season in 2008.

“I played very well in 2012. I hit the golf ball well and I putted a lot worse. Hopefully, I’ll putt better than I did in 2012. Game-wise it was very good in 2012 and I’m hoping it could be every bit as good as that and maybe a little bit stronger mentally.”

Harrington is well aware of the host of 40-somethings who have won majors in recent years but even though he believes he is capable of adding to his trio of successes, the age factor plays no part in his thinking.

“At the end of the day, as an individual, you don’t put yourself in a category of, you know, ‘I have to do this because’. You just go ‘I’m able to do it’. So I don’t think of myself as in my 40s. I hit the golf ball longer now than I have at any stage of my career. The only thing I would say I have with the years is my own baggage. Whether some people call it burnout or whether you want to call it just a lot of experience, that might be the only thing that would hinder me in my performance. It’s not a physical thing, that’s for sure, but my innocence is well and truly gone at this stage.”

That loss of innocence was never more keenly felt that in the last couple of years as his poor form coincided with the loss of his five-year exemptions those 2008 Open and PGA Championship wins gave him to both the Masters and US Open. Yet despite that shock, through it all, he maintained the belief he would get back to the Masters.

“I’m a very optimistic person and I set myself goals and I believe that I’m going to do this, that and the other, or try and do this, that and the other. I will say, over the last year or two, the last year anyway, it was a big shock to me, I think, probably coming into the last Ryder Cup and I suppose the likes of the Masters as well, because always in my career, whatever I’d set out to do, I end up doing, somehow.

“When the crunch came, I did something that would push me into place. Whereas, maybe in the last two, three years, and the Ryder Cup 2014, a number of deadlines came along and I, right up to the deadline, thought, ‘yeah, something’s going to happen that will fall into place so that I will succeed at this’.

“The last two, three years, those sort of things, instead of me doing something special, I’ve done nothing and failed. So that has been a bit of a shock to me the last couple of years.

“It was the first time in my career that I’ve essentially failed to make it through to teams.

“Maybe earlier in my career I would have had much more of a sense of urgency to make these things but with experience, in the last couple of years the urgency hasn’t been there.

“Whereas, as a kid I’d have been fearful that it’s not going to happen. I think anxiety helped but with experience, or without the innocence, I think ‘ah yeah, I’ll be okay, I’ll get this done’ but it hasn’t happened.

“So it has been a bit of a shock not to be in the Masters. I’m in a good place now, in that I’m focused on this and I’ve played good golf in the Masters. It’s all about the preparation at the moment, which is the right place for a golfer to be.”