TULSA, Okla. -- The morning-after headlines in the U.K. tabloids were predictable, a newsprint celebration of the fact that a favorite son of the Emerald Isle had won the oldest title in golf at the 136th British Open.
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| Paddy Harrington prefers to drink out of a plastic bottle than the Claret Jug. (Getty Images) |
Yet, if not for the slimmest of possible margins, a solitary letter in the headlines would have been changed and the reputation of eventual winner Padraig Harrington would have been dramatically altered, perhaps irreparably.
Given that he dunked two balls in a Carnoustie creek on the last hole of regulation, those blaring headlines would likely have read, "Plunk of the Irish," instead. Indeed, golf makes people utter words like "pluck" all the time -- or epithets that rhyme with it, anyway.
"I always reflect on the difference between success and failure; it is such a fine line, and sometimes it's not in your control," he said before his practice round at the 89th PGA Championship on Tuesday. "There's no question that when you win, you've got to enjoy it, but always taper it with a bit of 'what if,' and you'll always be able to handle the bad days as well."
The what-if whiffs in this instance would have been doomsday scenarios. Given the careening circumstances of his victory, he would have been a tortured and lonely man this week at the season's final major. At the very least, he would have been backpedaling furiously and fending off cruel assessments of his character.
Harrington, in what would have amounted to one of the most catastrophic meltdowns in majors history, double bogeyed the final hole of regulation at Carnoustie, then watched nervously on television as Sergio Garcia's winning par putt on the same hole lipped out of the cup, prompting a playoff that Harrington won. Garcia's bogey amounted to a gift reprieve, or else Irish eyes would have been crying, to tweak another headline-writing cliché.
If not for the tiniest blade of grass on Garcia's putt on the 18th, Harrington would have been eviscerated, not celebrated, which is where his unique sense of perspective comes in handy. The miniscule difference between winning and losing, in both performance and perception, was laughable, really.
"I would be trying to explain the loss, and it would be very hard, but I would be explaining it in the exact same way I'm trying to explain the win," he said.
His humility and sensibility have been hard-earned. As much as any prominent player of the past decade, Harrington grasps only too well the tiny chasm separating triumph and tragedy -- for years on the European Tour, he was characterized as a player who could not deliver the goods, and not without reason. He collected runner-up finishes as easily as three-leaf clovers, finishing second five times in 2001 alone.
"I have learned from every single win and loss," he said. "Most people don't learn when they win."
No question, some elite players sometimes exude an air of entitlement and seem to feel that victories are the inevitable result of talent, hard work and superior personal qualities. When Garcia lost the playoff to Harrington, he seemingly resented the fact that kismet played a role and the breaks didn't necessarily go his way. As Harrington has learned, Providence isn't just a city in Rhode Island and he doesn't take luck personally. The capricious nature of the game was wrapped into one not-so-tidy package on Carnoustie's 72nd hole.
"Paddy looks like he's going to win," Tiger Woods laughed, recalling the finish, "then it looked like he wasn't going to finish the hole."
