McGinley: Unceasing Harrington was always destined for annals of greatness

On Monday, Padraig Harrington will be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Paul McGinley claims that the signs were there long before that breakthrough Open win at Carnoustie in 2007.

Team Europe captain Paul McGinley, left, and assistant captain Padraig Harrington at the 2014 Ryder Cup. Picture credit: Matt Browne / SPORTSFILE

Padraig Harrington never stood still. There has never been a point where he found a contentment with his status quo. It would have never occurred to him to even contemplate such a state of affairs.

There was always a curiosity that he allied to an obsessiveness and it was apparent in the unceasing attention to detail when it came to anything to do with his game. If it wasn’t his swing it was his fitness or his mental game.

This thirst for knowledge and commitment to perfection is legion now. He once claimed to have done nothing on his golf game over one Christmas period before, in the next breath, listing a catalogue of tweaks and turns to his swing.

The fruits of these labours was most apparent in his capture of three majors that are the main embellishments on a career that will be celebrated in Pinehurst, North Carolina this evening when he is inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Paul McGinley looks back now and claims that the signs were there long before that breakthrough Open win at Carnoustie in 2007 that this was a player destined for such august company.

The key components were all there. Harrington loved the game, he loved the work and he was blessed with a world-class short-game. The key for McGinley was that this short game survived the most dramatic of swing reconstructions.

“You talk about Nick Faldo changing the swing. I mean, to me, it was 60% of what Pádraig has done in terms of how he changed his golf game. When we played Walker Cup, you look at the old pictures of it now, it was a short, flat, shut-faced slap cut.

“It's all he had. He couldn't hit the ball any distance. You look at how he ended up: high hands and a big high draw and hitting a ball a million miles. The short game stayed with him. And his competitiveness, his guile, was his biggest strength and well deserved.” 

McGinley is due to fly from London to Charlotte on Monday in order to make the Hall of Fame ceremony in Pinehurst. It will be a particularly sweet occasion for the former Ryder Cup captain who soldiered alongside him on so many fields.

The pair played for Leinster together. They represented their country, played Walker Cup on the same team, partnered up for World Cups and the Seve Trophy, in the Ryder Cup and in Dunhill Cups. Three decades they’ve spent walking side by side.

It’s a relationship that still informs McGinley on the other side of the ropes.

“The stuff that I say on TV, I try to make it relatable to my thoughts, my feelings, how I saw things, but I also use Pádraig a lot too because I was so familiar with his mindset and his way of seeing things as an elite player who'd won majors.

"So a lot of the positions I take in terms of how major players think I get a lot of those from having spent 30 years in a row with Padraig.”