Harrington sets sights on five-win season on Seniors circuit
Pádraig Harrington believes he may need to take his tally of PGA Tour Champions wins this season to five if he’s to have a chance of overtaking New Zealander Steven Alker and pocketing the $1 million the Charles Schwab Cup bonus.
The Dubliner (51) won for the third time ins even starts on the over-50s circuit on Sunday when he claimed the Ascension Charity Classic by a shot from 2009 US PGA champion YE Yang on 14-under par at Norwood Hills Country Club in St Louis.
Winner of the US Senior Open in June and the Dick’s Sporting Goods event three weeks ago, he’s now won $2.43 million this season and trails Charles Schwab standings leader Alker by just $134,778 with six events to go before the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship.
“It feels good,” Harrington said before making a hilarious but failed attempt to ring BMW PGA winner Shane Lowry at 3:30 am London time.
"I did get to watch his golf before I went out," Harrington said with a grin. "It was a nice feeling to see him win And then you are going out. But he's obviously a lightweight. Gone to bed early."
Harrington needed eight starts to get his first win on the PGA Tour Champions but now has three wins and four runner-up finishes in his last 12 events.
“It was nice to win at the start, get that monkey off my back,” he said of his US Senior Open win. "Then I started focusing on the Schwab Cup and the only way to catch Steve, he's continued to play well, is to get wins myself.
“Three wins is nice. I think I have six more to go, but I'll need to win again at least once if not twice to come out on top. Then you start thinking like how many Hale Irwin's got (45 wins), how many Bernhard Langer's got (43)."
Harrington returns to action in this week’s Sanford International at Minnehaha Country Club in South Dakota, where Darren Clarke is the defending champion.
He’s training himself to feel comfortable as the frontrunner in Seniors events, having flourished in his regular tour career as a chaser.
That means avoiding the temptation to get defensive with the lead and he showed he’s not afraid to take risks on Sunday when he pitched over a hospitality grandstand en route to the first of two bogeys in his last three holes in an eight-birdie round.
“I don't think I've ever stood over a pitch from 40 yards as it was and thought don't knife this into the hospitality in front of me, but that crossed my mind,” Harrington said.
“I suppose anytime you're trying something that's out of the ordinary, it sort of makes it a little tougher. And the one thing you don't want necessarily in a final round is drama, but if you get it, you have to put up with it and just get on with it.”
His caddie, Ronan Flood, shrugged that off as nothing out of the ordinary for a man who regularly hits balls over his house in practice.
Indeed, Harrington admitted that his bagman of 18 years is key to keeping him on an even keels.
“I was just saying that you would be shocked the job a caddie has to do out there,”Harrington said. “You know, getting the yardage and carrying the bag is the least of his work. He has to give a strong opinion when it's needed about clubbing and things like that, but mostly he's to act as your psychologist out there.
“I could be getting angry over a shot that there's no reason to get angry, it's OK, you can over-read things. When you're under pressure and trying to win a tournament, it's very easy maybe to hit a bad putt and think that you've never hit a bad putt before. Of course you have.
“So he has to be there to catch you from any self sabotage and not let you get too excited and make sure you don't get down on yourself. I think that's the biggest key. As much as I work with Bob Rotella, he's the one who has to put it into play quite a bit when it comes to on the golf course.”
