Pádraig Harrington: 'I'm realising there is only a window to win these tournaments'
MORE GLORY: Padraig Harrington walks to the fourth green during the final round of the US Senior Open Championship. Pic: Dylan Buell/Getty Images.
Eighteen years on from winning back-to-back Open Championships, Pádraig Harrington’s undimmed competitiveness delivered a second US Senior Open victory in a row on Sunday but the Irishman admitted time may be running out in his pursuit of further over-50s major success.
Harrington, 54, landed his fourth senior major and denied Stewart Cink a third major of the season as he shot the lowest round of the day at Ohio’s Scioto Country Club, a closing four-under-par 66 to win by four shots from his American rival.
Cink, who had led by a stroke after 54 holes after a bogey-free 64 on Saturday, shot a one-over 71 to finish second, as Harrington finished the week as the only player in the field to register sub-70 rounds on all four days, and all without a single three-putt green.
It was his third US Senior Open title having first won the event in 2022, his rookie senior season, at Pennsylvania’s Saucon Valley. The win ties him with Miller Barber for most victories in the tournament.
A three-time major winner as well, Harrington said it was “fantastic” to have made a piece of history on what he feels is an increasingly competitive PGA TOUR Champions circuit.
“I like creating records, and to be part of that is a big deal. It just goes to show how hard it is,” Harrington said.
“There's a little element to me, I'm 54, and there's new guys coming on, and it's the first time that I've been knocked back a little bit since I've got to the Champions Tour when I see these new guys like, ‘oh, these guys are good’, as in I (once) had an advantage.
“Now I'm seeing guys coming along, and I'm kind of realising there is only a window to win these tournaments. They have told me, other players, that it's kind of up to about 56, 57, then it starts going downhill pretty quickly.
“But certainly I was thinking that way and feeling that way, that you only have a set period to get your major wins on the Senior Tour because not that you're getting older but new guys are coming in.
“Hopefully I have a few more chances in me, as well. But I like that. No one has won more Senior Opens than me, which considering the people who would have played it over the years, that is a nice stat to put on my CV. I might have to put that right up at the top.”
Harrington has also won the 2025 ISPS HANDA Senior Open at Sunningdale in England but he suggested the US Senior Open’s tougher set-ups made winning them more satisfying.
“When I came to Saucon Valley (for) my first USGA Senior Open, I was, I wouldn't say surprised, I was shocked with the golf course that we were presented. I had seen nothing like this since I'd become a senior.
“This was this was a 2004 and 2005 full major golf course, exactly replicated, heavy rough. And then I'm looking at a week like this and I'm going, what are they going to do with the pins? This looks tough. Of course the USGA provide a real tournament.
“What was interesting this week, they did a mixture because of the style of greens. You did have some nice pins if you were in positions, and they had some really, really tough pins, as well. It really has the feel of a real major. That shocked me originally. I look forward to coming back every year. This is like my -- could I play one like this every week?
“You have to be patient. You have to be… all the traits that I've built my own career on line up at a US Open. I never won one for real, but I always loved playing them because you had to really be… your mental fortitude was so important during the week of a US Open.
“Again, of all our senior events, this is the one that would stand out for asking those mental questions as much as the physical questions.”
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