BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- It's a theory that will appear, at first listen, to be at least as crazy as the final two hours of the theater that played out Sunday at the 90th PGA Championship.
|
|
| Padraig Harrington is the first European to win the PGA Championship in its 50-year stroke play history. (Getty Images) |
Not many noticed at the time, but the Irishman's eureka moment at the majors, at least to him, came amid the ruin and rubble of an utter disaster at the U.S. Open in 2006.
As many might recall, a few notable fellows had trouble getting off the golf course alive at Winged Foot. Former Open winner Jim Furyk blew a chance, then Colin Montgomerie butchered the 72nd hole from the middle of the fairway. The coup De grace came when leader Phil Mickelson hit a driver off a hospitality tent to hand the title to an appreciative Geoff Ogilvy.
There were chalk outlines around figurative corpses everywhere, but not many had noticed the plucky Irishman amid the mayhem. He'd bogeyed his last three holes and fallen into a tie for fifth. If it was anybody but Harrington, whose internal wiring is a bit unusual, the amusing and telling anecdote he related about the aftermath would sound insipid.
The taint of the bogeys still fresh in his nostrils, he strode straight over to his sports psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella, and said, "Now I know I'll win a major."
From those ashes rose one of the greatest runs in the annals of European golf. Harrington on Sunday finished off a pair of consecutive 66s to become the first European to win the PGA Championship in its 50-year stroke play history, as well as the first Continental ever to win consecutive majors in the same year.
To think that one of the most memorable stretches of the past few decades all began with a bungling, stumbling finish a shade over two years ago, with a personal slamming that was hardly grand. "Winged Foot was pivotal," he said. "I now know what it takes to win a major."
Well, yeah, duh. Less obvious were the roots of his amazing run. If he wins any more of these things, this bloke is going to be bigger than Bono, another Dubliner who gets to work with the inestimable benefit of overdubs and do-overs. Harrington does his work live, without a net.
Harrington became the fourth player in history to win the British Open and PGA titles in succession, joining Walter Hagen, Nick Price and Tiger Woods as those who have pulled off the year-ending double. If I was Eldrick and watching at home with my remote control in hand, I think I'd be taking notice. Despite Woods' first-half heroics, Harrington has possibly supplanted him as the PGA Tour Player of the Year, an honor never before won by a European.
It was all borne amid the bitter end two summers ago at Winged Foot, at which time Harrington had contended a few times at majors, but never really come close to delivering the goods. That mirrored his early performances as a tour player in Europe, where his runner-up finishes were as plentiful as three-leaf clovers.
"Even though I finished with three bogeys, I played awesome for the first 15 holes at Winged Foot," he said. "If I put the putting I had on today on the round at Winged Foot, I would have been so much better.
"As in, I played the golf -- and sometimes I questioned whether I would play the golf in those situations."
