You looking for a good time? Catch every swing you can that Padraig Harrington makes this week at Royal Troon, where the 52-year-old golfer will be looking to win his third British Open. OK, OK, not too likely, but not totally nutso. His golf is still excellent.
Then, to keep this party going, check him out next week at Carnoustie, when the new World Golf Hall of Fame inductee will be looking to win his first British Senior Open. Padraig Harrington is huge fun to watch.
This guy is all in on every practice swing, every swing swing, every word out of his mouth. He’s as original as anybody playing this game today. He’s also the fifth victim in GOLF.com’s original series called . . . GOLF Originals. David Feherty in March, Tom Doak in April, Mike Whan in May, Brandel Chamblee in June, and here’s Paddy.
You can watch him free, here and now, on this page. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?
You want to hear about how to hit a hybrid out of the rough? We got Paddy on that. Or what went wrong with Rory on that 30-inch putt on 70th hole of the U.S. Open? Paddy weighs in. Or what it was like to play with Greg Norman in the last twosome, final day, in the 2008 British Open? Or what it’s like to play in a pro-am with Harrington as your pro?
Hint: Harrington likes playing in pro-ams, but if you’re going to play with him, you better be able to handle the truth. At a senior event last month, in Endicott, N.Y., near Binghamton, Harrington played with an amateur who described his experience playing high school baseball but showed no instinct or knack for golf at all. Harrington was baffled.
“Yalook incredibly unathletic,” he said.
Pro instructed am to make a horizontal baseball swing with a golf club. (That’s Bill Murray’s go-to pre-shot move.) The fella stepped right into an imaginary pitch. Harrington had the guy make that same swing at a golf ball at his feet. It was instantly a hundred times better.
“OK!” Harrington said. “Brilliant!”
He prods and he gives. It’s all in good fun, every last bit of it.
Harrington notes, in this 15-minute mini-doc that is an instructional video by happy accident, that the golf swing basically is the baseball swing, and in both you’re swinging a stick at a ball. Harrington’s father was a police officer who could play any sport. Harrington is the youngest of five boys. If only his unpretentiousness were contagious. Golf needs more Padraig Harringtons. But there’s only one, and we got him here.
At Troon, his Thursday-Friday tee times are late/early. Phil Mickelson is in the threesome in front of him and Darren Clarke is in front of Mickelson. Three Open winners in their 50s, all in a row. Clarke won the 2022 Senior Open. Mickelson hasn’t played in one. Harrington wouldn’t miss it. He loves playing tournament golf. He loves talking about the swing. He loves teaching the game, by which he means helping you realize that, to some significant degree, you have to figure it out for yourself. There will be future major winners who have unlocked some of the mysteries of the game for themselves, as Clarke and Harrington and Mickelson have done. But not all that many. It’s at the root of Harrington’s immense appeal. Add that to this: When he was 20, the namesake son of the Garda officer and boxer figured he’d become an accountant.
He didn’t become an accountant. Two years after the death of his father, for whom he was named, Padraig Harrington went on an epic run: the 2007 British Open, the 2008 British Open, the 2008 PGA Championship. Those three wins alone made him a Hall of Famer, but there was lots more where that came from.
My colleague Darren Riehl and I saw Harrington, alongside four amateurs of varying skills, at a senior tour event, the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open, at a public course, the En-Joie Golf Club in Endicott, about a week after his Hall of Fame induction. You could have warmed a pizza slice on a cart path, the day was so hot. If Harrington had missed a dessert course in the past month it was not evident. He was hitting it all over the map, but also over, under and around trees. (The course has a lot of trees.) He got mad at Darren and me — or maybe I should just say me — by causing him to miss an on-course food truck with our endless questions and documenting. I would have taken the over on him shooting 216 or higher, even par for the three-round tournament. He shot 15 under and one by a shot. Three trips to Endicott. Three wins.
I told Harrington that I could draw a straight line from Lee Trevino to Nick Price to him, for understanding the game, playing it at the highest level, having a knack for teaching it in terms anyone could understand. He liked that. He told us he liked pro-ams, that pro-ams helped him with his own golf. You can get more than a taste of all of that, here on this GOLF Originals presentation. You do want to get better, don’t you? Paddy’s here to help, without being all warm and fuzzy about it.
What a relief.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
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