Padraig Harrington: ‘Performance is only reason a pro golfer gets into the Hall of Fame’
HALL OF FAMER: Padraig Harrington poses for a photo with the winners trophy in a miniature Aston Martin during the final round of the Hoag Classic Newport Beach at Newport Beach Country Club. Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images.
As Padraig Harrington points out, it takes something tangible to gain entry into the World Golf Hall of Fame, not being a stickler for the rules or a champion of etiquette.
Yet the Irishman will be inducted into the class of 2024 in Pinehurst, North Carolina on Monday evening having been both a golfer who loved the game he has continued to champion after 29 years as a touring professional and a competitor who has won 31 titles worldwide.
“There’s only one reason a professional golfer gets into the Hall of Fame and that’s his performance. There’s no other reason. It’s purely down to results,” Harrington said as he reflected on his official induction to the golfing pantheon at the age of 52.
“What would I like to be remembered as a golfer? I hope to be remembered as someone who was a competitor, as someone who loved the game of golf, loved the rules, the etiquette. These things don’t get you into the Hall of Fame. Being fastidious about rules is not going to get you in to the Hall of Fame.
“This is my personality. Being a doer, someone who tries, someone who’s competitive. Being as tough as can be, but fair. I feel like I was a tough competitor. I feel like my competitors believe that. In me, I always wanted to be tougher, but I wanted to be very, very fair in the way I played, let my clubs do the talking.
"My peers will remember me as a hard worker who got the most out of his game, who was a real tough competitor. I’d like to be the guy who that you don’t want to play against in a play-off. That guy ‘You know what? I’d rather not be in a play-off with him as he’s likely to do anything to win’. Somebody’s who’s prepared to really compete and dig deep.”
Harrington really has dug deep, deeper than most if not all of his contemporaries, to reach the highest levels of his sport and has been richly rewarded with his two Open Championship victories at Carnoustie and Royal Birkdale in 2007 and 2008, adding on the 2008 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits for good measure.
His post-50 senior career has also been productive, with the US Senior Open in 2022 the first of seven titles on the PGA Tour Champions with this year’s Hoag Classic Newport Beach the most recent.
It is a career arc he clearly takes pride in, as he explained when picking out the highlights of his non-major championship victories.
“I am very lucky that at every level I won the biggest events going that I could. So I had a lovely succession to my career. I won at boys level, youths level, senior level. When I turned pro, I won on the European Tour, and I started getting bigger and bigger.
“The first win on the European Tour (1996 Portugal Open) was very big, probably the World Cup with Paul McGinley was bigger in '97. I think that was a bigger deal. That was a big, big deal. That was a big win.
“First win, amateur wise, you know, I won the All-Ireland Mother & Son as my last ever tournament. It was my last ever amateur tournament and I wasn't getting another go at it. So that was a big win. That goes down as something that was very important.
And that was the one thing as well in my career, I always had closure. Winning the Walker Cup in '95, I played three Walker Cups but we’d lost in '91 and '93. I wouldn't have wanted to turn pro, you know, I didn't want to finish like that. I wanted to have a winning Walker Cup. So that was incredibly important.
“So there were a lot of milestones in my career. I've been very fortunate that I won in a nice sequence. You could win a major at the start of your career and you spend your life chasing your tail. I was well into my career, it was nice building time.
“Every win is nice, but the first win, I'm sure it was big when I started winning again, you know, my first two years on tour was good and then with Bob (Torrance), I stepped back, that first year, and when I started winning again, that was that was a big deal.
“Making the Ryder Cup in '99, I know I didn't win to get into the Ryder Cup in '99 , I finished second and second, that was a big deal. Then losing the '99 Ryder Cup, it was such an enormous thing to come back and win in 2002 because, you know, were we going to go back on a losing streak? This was a turnaround moment and then winning in the States in 2004.
“Lots of really nice things have happened in my career. Lovely succession. Yeah, very, very comfortable with it all but probably outside of my three majors, the one that meant the most at the time was that World Cup in 97.”
Harrington was grateful to have his memory jogged a little further when it was pointed out he had failed to mention his 2007 Irish Open win at Killarney, the victory that proved to be launchpad into major-winning status two months later at The 136th Open.
“Yeah, I'd forgotten the Irish Open. 100 per cent. Again, beautifully sequenced the whole thing. Natural progression. It was exactly the level I was at, at that stage. It felt like a major and I was starting to push for those majors and it was perfectly timed.
“Yeah, 100 per cent I would add the Irish Open as right up there. I'd be devastated with my career if I didn't have an Irish Open in there. I can't believe I didn't bring it up as I was going on but the Irish Open fits in lovely.
“Winning the European Order a Merit was obviously a big deal at the time. You couldn't have drawn up my graph better for how I kept moving along. It was kind of textbook when you look at it but the Irish Open was definitely up there with the World Cup.
“The Irish Open was a really big deal but the World Cup, I think took both myself and Paul by surprise in the sense of how well it was taken home. It really was big news. And the fact you share it with somebody makes all the difference. And it was so big for us at the time. And it was $200,000. Wow, it was colossal. Colossal.
“As McGinley always says, ‘I built the room in the house’. He got an extra room in the house because of the winnings. He said I could always come and stay there. I suppose to have the team element, I do go back to that a lot but the Irish Open, thanks for bringing it up, it's right there with it.”
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