Harrington on Woods’ finish:
Irish eyes were really smiling
CHASKA, Minn. – The lights in the interview room beamed down on Padraig Harrington, his red cap slightly up, exposing his face. And while he was addressing the media corps, after the third round, Tiger Woods was out on the 18th green, wrapping things up with a routine par, which raised an interesting issue. Harrington had bogeyed just once, at the 18th, shot 69 to fall two shots behind, and he was still there, thanks to Woods’ par. Someone wondered how Harrington felt about Woods not extending his lead. Which, in the arithmetic of golf, amounted to a reprieve. It meant Woods would lead by two instead of three going into Sunday’s final round. And how did he feel about this? Harrington paused and looked down at the table.
“I’m trying not to smile,” Harrington said.
The room rocked. Harrington started to laugh, too.
“What was the question?” he said.
The media corps broke up.
“No, really – what was the question?”
Harrington is the defending champion in this outing. It will be recalled that he won the 2008 PGA while Woods was recuperating from knee surgery. Not that he needs an asterisk on his name, but Woods was absent, and that’s just a fact.
Harrington is showing his amazing resiliency and an apparently Tiger-proof core to his spirit. Remember, the weary script reads that anyone challenging Tiger Woods immediately turns to mush, and the fairways are littered with their bodies. Not so this Harrington. No burn marks on him. The record shows that he beat Woods in the Target World Challenge in 2002, a “Silly Season” event in which there’s nothing silly about the competition, and then in the 2006 Dunlop Phoenix in Japan, he not only caught Woods in the final round, he beat him in a playoff.
And don’t forget the 1995 Walker Cup, when they were amateurs, when Harrington and his mortician friend teamed to beat Woods and John Harris.
“My friend would not be happy with being called a moritician,” Harrington said. Laughing, of course.
Maybe youth offered its own form of protection. Maybe Woods was just another American amateur. As a 19-year-old, was he even aware of Woods’ reputation?
“I think everybody was aware of Tiger’s reputation,” Harrington said, “when he was two.”
But that match, he noted – feeling that such a reminder seemed necessary -- was a long time ago and under totally different conditions.
“It’s a new game tomorrow,” Harrington said. “So I don’t think that’s going to be playing in his mind, anyway.”
So many have paid dearly for their presumption, for even daring to suggest out loud that they think, well, maybe they can beat Woods. Or at least would like to. Harrington doesn’t dabble in that stuff. Take, for example, the break of the pairings for the final round Sunday. Woods, who shot a 1-under 71, is at 8 under, and will play in the final pairing with South Korea’s Y.E. Yang, who shot 67 and tied Harrington.
Harrington, instead, will play in the next-to-last pairing with Henrik Stenson. Generally, this is a good thing, not to play with Woods. The heat melts the other guy. The only real hope is to play earlier, and have the difference in time and distance offer some insulation from the fire.
Harrington?
“I think I would rather,” he said, given his choice of being paired with Woods. “I think it would suit me better to have that sort of match play style. I think I would get into it, and hopefully raise my game.”
Harrington would have had that chance except that he botched the 18th, hitting his second over the green, then chipping from a bad lie back over and making his only bogey of the round.
Harrington was paired with Ross Fisher, in the third group back from Woods, and marveled that he’d received a warm and inspiring reception from the fans. But there was an ulterior motive in that applause.
“I get the impression that there are a lot of people who are cheering me on wanting me to push him along, but they still want Tiger to win,” he said, drawing a pretty good laugh from the media corps with that one. “You know – they would like the idea of, let’s support the underdog until he catches up, and then we’ll support Tiger again sort of thing.
“So be it. That’s fine with me. I’ll serve my time.”
The big thing is a game plan, no matter where he’s playing. And he has an interesting one. He’s going on the offense.
“To get a win, you’ve got to beat him by three tomorrow,” Harrington said. “That’s a tall order. But everybody who is behind is going to think – we have nothing to lose. You’ve got to have that attitude.
“I’ve got to have that attitude tomorrow. I’ve got to stand there on every shot and think to myself, well, so what if I hit a bad shot. I’ve got to just fire it up and go for those shots, and if I’m going to catch three shots, that’s the way to do it – certainly not to be cautious.”
So Harrington might just go down in flames Sunday. On the other hand, maybe he’ll pull it off. And if he does, he can think of an early couple days, give a grin, and say, “Been there, done that.”
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