Executive Golf Magazine

The Open champion Padraig Harrington takes care of the golf while his wife looks after the rest.

But that’s Padraig Harrington for you. Padraig Harrington - Champion golfer of 2007. No Open champion in recent memory has welcomed success as easily and comfortably as Padraig Harrington. At Carnoustie in July he was relaxed at the end of his fourth round even though he had taken six strokes to play the 72nd hole and might have lost his chance to win his first major championship. He was relaxed at the end of the play-off with Sergio Garcia; the time when Patrick, his son, asked if he could put ladybirds in the claret jug.

One month later the reigning Open champion was playing in the Bridgestone Invitational at Akron, Ohio, and he was relaxed there, too. Whatever happened to him, he took it on the chin. He did not refuse a single autograph request. He gave golf balls to children. He answered every question he was asked. He posed for photographs.

“I’d say I am relaxed about it,” he says. “The attention I am getting is up by a factor but it’s not a quantum leap. Bob Rotella (the sports psychologist who works with Harrington) is a very practical man. He said I should take the handshakes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday; and then on Thursday I should go back to playing golf.

“So far the big reaction has not hit me. Since I won the Open I have been saying to myself ‘don’t let your guard down. Fight hard’. And I have been. My work-rate on the course has been good. The big test for me will come in another three months when I turn up and do not play very well and things don’t go my way. But this (as he gestures at the autograph hunters and well-wishers) this is easy to take.”

In this aspect, Harrington reminds me of a predecessor of his, Mark O’Meara, the Open champion at Royal Birkdale in 1998. Like O’Meara, Harrington espouses strong family values. Like O’Meara, Harrington is the soul of modesty. Like O’Meara, Harrington has strong virtues dinned into him as a child. From Bob O’Meara, Mark inherited an easy-going nature that makes him easy to be around. For O’Meara read Harrington. From Nelda O’Meara, his mother, Mark inherited a work ethic, an understanding that makes him cherish what he has to work for and an understanding of the true meaning of wealth. For O’Meara read Harrington.

There are few more popular men than Harrington on the European Tour, though his tact and diplomacy were tested in October when he was fiercely criticised by Severiano Ballesteros for skipping the Seve Trophy. “When you are Open champion sometimes you have to do things you don’t really like. You have certain obligations towards the game” was just one of the things Ballesteros said.

Harrington’s defence was that he was tired and carrying injuries to his neck, knee and thumb and, had he not withdrawn, would not have been able to mount a realistic defence of his Order of Merit title. He looked very angry when Ballesteros’s remarks were relayed to him with a terse “no comment” as much as he could muster. Seve Ballesteros is off Harrington’s Christmas card list, that’s for sure.

“So far the big reaction has not hit me. Since I won the Open I have been saying to myself ‘don’t let your guard down. Fight hard’. And I have been”

For all the similarities between O’Meara and Harrington, though, there is one difference between them that is striking. O’Meara talks of taking care of things. The only things that Harrington can be relied on to take care of are to do with his golf and he does this with a vengeance. He has a hunger for self-improvement. When he goes into a bookshop he walks straight to the general psychology shelves. When he plays in pro-ams he watches his amateur partners to see what he can pick up. If he is beaten at tennis by a better player he wants a lesson from his conqueror. He wants to know things. He asks questions. “I cannot understand why I have this desire to learn but I do,” he says.

Harrington may be one of the hardest workers in modern professional golf. Bob Torrance, the coach with whom he has worked since turning professional, is hugely admiring of Harrington’s work ethic. Dave McNeilly, the caddie who now carries Niclas Fasth’s bag after spells with Nick Price and Nick Faldo, says the same thing.

“Padraig and Faldo have games that had to be worked at,” McNeilly says. “They chiselled away, chiselled, chiselled. Nick Price is always going to be one of the best strikers of a ball in the history of the game. Faldo made himself into one of the world’s best strikers and Padraig is getting there. He has more in common with Faldo than Price. They both work unbelievably hard.”

All areas of Harrington’s life other than golf, however, are hoovered up by Caroline, his wife and a graduate of the Dublin Business School. If you want to understand Harrington then it is as well to talk first to the lady who is known as “Ceefax” by golfers because she always seems to know the facts. To say that she, the daughter of a statistician, is sharp in stating the obvious. It is evident within moments of meeting her.

More than once she has described her role as allowing Padraig to play golf while she does the rest. “Padraig has not seen a bill, read a credit card statement or paid a cheque since I’ve known him,” she says. “Nor has he booked a restaurant. If it was left to him to do that, we’d all have died of starvation long ago.”

She is his greatest supporter, following him for 18 holes of almost every competitive round he has played. No sneaking off to the spa for Caroline Harrington. Attentive and articulate, she is as organised as Harrington is not and brings a formidable drive to her husband’s cause so that of the two of them it can be said the sum exceeds the total of the parts. They have the power of three in other words.

“I work with a lot of psychologists and there is none more so than my wife. Since I turned pro, she has missed only a couple of my tournaments. As much as I enjoy playing, she is enjoying being there and being part of it. I would have to say she is as committed to my golf as I am”

“I work with a lot of psychologists and there is none more so than my wife,” Harrington says. “Since I turned pro, she has missed only a couple of my tournaments. As much as I enjoy playing, she is enjoying being there and being part of it. I would have to say she is as committed to my golf as I am.”

In Akron last August, Caroline told a revealing story about pressure, one that said as much about her and her husband as the characters in the story. “At Oakmont (in the US Open in June) Zach Johnson and Ernie Els were playing together and as they approached a green I heard a spectator say, ‘Poor Zach. He’s six over par.’ I thought to myself, ‘Poor Zach? He’s thinking he couldn’t give a toss. I’m the Masters champion. Where’s the pressure’.”

To know Padraig Harrington it is helpful to have known his father, who died in July 2005. And now it is even more necessary to know Patrick, his son. “I had some comments from people about allowing Patrick to run on to the 18th green at Carnoustie after Padraig had just taken a six,” Caroline recalls. “If you’d seen the smile light up Padraig’s face when he saw his son you’d know that nothing that had happened mattered at that moment except Patrick.

“Patrick will be four shortly. He is a very confident child. He has the vocabulary of a six-year-old. Patrick does not understand what his father has done but it does not matter. Padraig is always champion to Patrick. Sometimes Padraig says to Patrick, ‘who are you talking to?’ and Patrick replies: ‘The champion’.”

Someone once said - and many people have repeated it since - that you can learn more about a person’s character in adversity than in success. Thus it was revealing to observe Harrington the day he was disqualified from an event at The Belfry in 2000 that he was leading by five strokes for not signing his card.

“He coped with that brilliantly,” Caroline says. “Golfers are used to abiding by the rules.”

Coping with what might be seen as failure is something that Harrington has done well, never more so than during his long run of second place finishes. Caroline Harrington observed that had Padraig not won the Open then even he would have found that hard to take. Even Harrington’s renowned ability to see good in everything would have been tested.

But win the Open he did. He beat Sergio Garcia in a play-off that was, to all intents and purposes, match play. That is what Harrington excels at. He once had a run of 27 singles for Ireland at which he was unbeaten. “Match play sharpens my focus,” he says.

Perhaps it is odd then that such a good match player should have won a major stroke play championship and by doing so ended that long spell in which Europeans had not won a major championship. Harrington’s victory at Carnoustie was the first by someone from that continent since Paul Lawrie’s victory in the same event at the same course in 1999.

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