'I completely changed the PGA' - Padraig Harrington's brilliant mind races into Quail Hollow

At 53, Harrington has won a new generation of fans. He still believes he can win another Major, perhaps this week, but also thinks McIlroy and Lowry have what it takes to thrive in Charlotte

GREAT FORM: Padraig Harrington of Ireland plays a shot from a bunker on the first hole prior to the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Country Club. Pic: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images.

A dozen midday minutes have passed under a broiling Carolina sun and it feels like Padraig Harrington hasn’t taken a breath. The trio of Irish journalists have asked a grand total of four questions. Four.

Transcribing the tape reveals the quartet of queries have elicited 1220 words worth of answers. Considering the opening question was ‘How are you Padraig?’ the depth of the replies is, well, impressive.

It is also unsurprising. Harrington is 53 years of age, which means for over half a century now not a single topic has been left under-thought. One of the most brilliant minds in modern Irish sport is not one which bends towards brevity.

The fifth question asks Harrington to ponder what the Wanamaker Trophy, its image utterly ubiquitous around Quail Hollow, means to him, 17 years after he lifted it?

“I completely changed it! I did change it, I’m 100% sure I changed the parameters of the PGA trophy. So when I won the Open and…” At this point he reaches out, rests his right arm on the shoulder of the Irish Examiner and switches to an old man Harrington tone. “…let me tell you about the time I won The Open and the PGA Championship in 2008.

“Bear in mind I got no exemption. I got zero exemptions for winning the PGA in 2008, none. I got a one-year exemption for winning the Open in 2008, I got nothing for winning the PGA. I already had a five-year exemption so you get no more. Nothing. Didn’t get one more, PGA, major, any event, nothing. Anyway…the trophy?”

Yes, the trophy.

“So I had both trophies at the same time and the PGA trophy they gave me was a 50 per cent-[sized] replica and it’s shocking how small 50 per cent looks.

"I can say this right now, the concept of what 100 per cent is and what 50 per cent is…when people saw the PGA trophy they pushed it aside and took a photo with the Open trophy. They had no interest in it.

“I went to the [PGA] and said ‘look guys, you’re ruining your brand, nobody cares about this trophy’. So they went back and I was the first one to get a 90 per cent replica. Everybody since then has got 90.” 

And that’s the story of how Padraig Harrington changed golf. He’s not finished. The answer, we mean. He goes on to talk about his two Claret Jugs and how you know you have the original — an engraved typo of Hoylake as Holylake.

But he’s not finished changing golf either. His Paddy’s Golf Tips series have made him a YouTube and social media favourite to a new generation who know little to nothing of Carnoustie and the ladybirds, Birkdale and Oakland Hills, the 41 pro wins, the Ryder Cup heroics.

“The most common thing that’ll be said to me this week on the golf course is ‘I love your videos’. I am known more for my videos than…”

RTÉ’s Greg Allen finishes his sentence for him — “I won three Majors you know”. To which Harrington replies “And I’m still trying to teach you how to hit a draw!”

Thus begins another couple of hundred words on how Greg Allen should hit a draw.

Harrington’s also changing the game by continuing, thirty years after turning pro, to embrace every mind-melting, soul-crushing, hoor'n'bastarding aspect of it, looking for that fraction of a fraction of a per cent difference.

He’s at the point where he doesn’t even need to be here. Most of his colleagues on the Champions Tour who were eligible for this week have opted to stay there and compete for one of its Majors, The Regions Tradition.

“They have their silliest Major this week and I'm not playing,” he smiles. “I believe my limited chance of winning this event is much more important than my good chance of winning that event.”

He’s doing everything he can to make that outcome, however unlikely, happen. We’d waited patiently by the putting green while he had gone through a series of routines, some orthodox, some not. One involved putting an alignment stick between the front two belt loops on his pants and rotating through while keeping the stick steady. Smooth hips are essential. So too a settled head.

“I’ve got Bob Rotella here and I’ve committed after playing poorly in my last event to to getting my mental game going again,” he says of the world’s leading sports psychologist, who last month helped Rory McIlroy reach his promised land.

“Bob’s message never changes. It really doesn’t and that’s the sign of a good coach. It’s amazing, I always say Bob’s like a school teacher. He gives you your homework and you’ve to go and do it.

"But when he’s standing there you’re more likely to do it. I’ve referenced it with Rory and Shane. It’s interesting we’re all playing together today and I said to Bob ‘now it’s three holes apiece today, Bob’.”

Bless Bob for doing his best to defy that ultimately false Freud quote from The Departed about the Irish being impervious to psychoanalysis. Harrington himself had already debunked it plenty anyway.

"I always believe I can win, so why not? To do that I have to get my head in the right place,” he says of this week.

But what are the mental challenges of Quail Hollow?

“There’s risk-reward. Clearly it suits Rory because it’s a big golf course and he’s played well at it. But I would have thought…Shane doesn’t like it…but I would have thought the course would suit him because Shane is very good at not getting greedy.

"He doesn’t like to be out of position so he plays very steady golf. This is coming from me and I’d be in the boat of ‘go, go, go for everything’ because that’s the only thing I know.

"I can’t do what Shane does but Shane doesn’t want to do what I do either. It’s a personality thing. Maybe I’m looking at Shane and saying I wouldn’t mind a bit of that.”

That’s 117 words of a partial answer. Another 271 follow. For now, we are out of time and space.

Fear not. Padraig Harrington will be around to fill it all over again for a while yet.