Pádraig Harrington's legacy is seen everywhere at the PGA Championship - even in the size of the trophy
PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON'S LEGACY runs so deep we're all still excavating it, but happily the man himself is occasionally willing to point us in the right direction.
Ambling off the putting green at Quail Hollow, Harrington gladly stops for a quick chat on his way to the driving range. Not that Harrington is particularly loyal to the whole brevity being the soul of wit shtick. Twenty minutes later, his caddie comes to find him in full flow and the interview is finished as a walk-and-talk to the range.
Harrington's major success changed Irish golf forever – Rory McIlroy praised him last year as the man who lighted the path for the talents who followed – but he tells us he has changed this week's championship in subtler ways.
When Harrington won the 2008 PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, he was handed the giant, 27 pound Wanamaker Trophy at the on-site presentation but given a replica half the size to take home with him.
One problem.
Harrington says the world recognises the Wanamaker trophy solely by its size, and so this diet version went neglected during trophy tours and house visits.
'Basically when people saw the PGA trophy they didn't know it was the PGA trophy and they pushed it aside and took a photo with the Open trophy', says Harrington, who naturally saw another flaw to be addressed.
'I completely changed it! I did change it, I'm 100% sure. I went to them and said, 'Guys, you are ruining your brand. Nobody cares about this trophy.''
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Harrington lifts the full-size Wanamaker trophy in 2008. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo
And so the PGA of America responded to Harrington by building a replica 90% the size of the original Wanamaker Trophy. The first of these larger replicas was given to Harrington, and has been given out to every winner since. (He also got to keep the original 50% replica, which he now thinks is at Stackstown Golf Club.)
If major championships have been Tigerproofed, then some of their trophies have been Pádraigproofed.
The conversation wends further on to the Claret Jug, as Harrington tells us winners have to pay for their keep-at-home replicas. Realising this in 2007, Harrington decided to fill his boots and asked for five of them, after which the Royal and Ancient brought in a rule that limited the number of replicas that can be ordered by any champion.
'I can't believe nobody else asked for more, I would have bought 10!', exclaims Harrington.
Along with his Russian Doll-style Wanamakers, Harrington has a lifetime exemption to play this event, hence why he's in Charlotte this week rather than at the Regions Tradition in Alabama, which is one of the five majors on the seniors' tour.
'They have their silliest major this week and I'm not playing it', says Harrington. 'I believe my limited chance of winning this event is much more important than my good chance of winning that event.'
He is playing in Quail Hollow this week partly to reset and set himself up for a two-month stretch on the champions' tour that culminates with the Open Championship at Portrush.
His game, he says, is fine, but he is playing to get his mind in the right condition. To that end, his long-time sports psychologist Bob Rotella is on site this week.
'I always say Bob's like a school teacher,' says Harrington. 'He gives you your homework and you've to go and do it. But when he's standing there you're more likely to do it. That's not a respect [thing]. It's more about the relationship you have with him. You don't want to let him down. He stands there and says 'right, let's do it!' and you realise 'god I wasn't doing it'. You have to have that buy-in.'
Harrington has long-preached Rotella's gospel and McIlroy and Shane Lowry have joined the congregation. The trio played the front nine in a practice round on Tuesday afternoon, and Harrington joked that they are each allowed to use Rotella for three holes only.
The 42 weren't alone in probing Harrington's legacy on Tuesday afternoon. Earlier in an adjacent press conference room, Jon Rahm was asked for his lessons from a decade of major championship golf and alighted on an article from the Harrington doctrine.
'You always feel like, to win a major, you have to play perfect, which is not true', said Rahm. 'I remember the R&A did this 20-minute documentary with Open champions, and Pádraig Harrington said in Muirfield in '02, when he played about as good as he could play and didn't win, and at that point he thought he had to get lucky to win a major championship.'
Harrington is a kind of influencer in his own right, and he's not exactly leaning away from it. While he's not quite a Bryson-DeChambeau-trying-to-break-50-with-Donald-Trump-level content creator, his Paddy's Golf Tips on YouTube have become a roaring success.
'The most common thing that'll be said to me this week on the golf course is 'I love your videos'', says Harrington. But like all great artists, he is frustrated by the base desires of his audience. Where all of his tips on swing technique are hugely popular, the analytics on his mental tips never do anywhere near the same numbers.
'My technical stuff is very much aimed at a 10-handicap. Technically I wouldn't know what to teach these guys, but mentally I do', says Harrington, gesturing at the world class pros behind him on the putting green. 'If I was a coach I would be either coaching the mental game at the top level or the physical game at the weekend warrior level. But the weekend warrior doesn't like my mental videos.'
Not that Harrington is going to stop posting his mental tricks. He happened to play a few practice holes on Monday with Jordan Spieth, not by design but because they were among the very few golfers on a rain-lashed course. The rain fell so hard that fans were barred from entry and puddles pooled across the course, but Harrington persisted partly out of his addiction to hard work, and partly to get an edge. He wanted to see flooded greens so as to be able to easily read their breaks and undulations.
He took a photo of the flooded 18th green, and says he'll post it online rather than secreting the hard-earned info for himself.
'I'm not afraid of putting it up but when I do mental stuff like that it does help my competitors more,' he says. 'I don't worry about it. They still have to do it, that's my attitude.'
Then again, it would be absurd for Harrington to worry about helping his competition, given his restless, singular mind has been doing that for decades.
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