Pádraig Harrington finished one cup of tea and treated himself to a second, the least he deserved if the truth be told. For the 45-year-old Dubliner, victory in the Portugal Masters - satisfying on so many fronts, from his extraordinary scrambling to it being a season’s low total on the European Tour - has changed his scheduling: rather than heading back stateside to kick-start the wraparound PGA Tour 2016/’17 season, the decision has been made to stick with the European Tour to its death.
“I’m going to commit to finish off the European Tour schedule, to play the last three,” confirmed Harrington yesterday. “There’s more world ranking points (in Europe) and, if I win any event, I probably get back into the top-50 in the world rankings. The only thing I can’t achieve by playing the European events is obviously getting a bit of a good start to the FedEx Cup in the states.”
It now means that Harrington will delay his reappearance on the PGA Tour until next February, by which time that circuit - already under way - will have had 12 tournaments played. “It puts me quite a bit behind the eight-ball,” he conceded.
But, having weighed up the pros and cons of the situation, Harrington, who has moved to 97th in the latest world rankings and up to 43rd in the Race to Dubai standings, has decided that the European route is the way to go. It means he will finish his year’s work by playing the Turkish Airlines Open, the Nedbank in Sun City and the season-finishing DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.
In that stretch of three tournaments, his goal, apart from claiming another tournament win, will be to break into the world's top-50 by the end of the year which would ensure an invite to the US Masters in Augusta National next April.
“If I win, that takes care of itself. Or, if I have a couple of good events, big performances, finish in the top-three twice, I’d probably move into the top 15 in the order of merit which would also get me into the Masters. So, there’s plenty of ways to get it done. It is definitely the way to go, to commit to playing the Final Series. The only downside is it doesn’t give me a great start to the FedEx Cup. I want to keep my PGA Tour exemption going (into 2018), so by playing in Europe that makes that probably 20 per cent harder by playing less tournaments.”
In a way, it’s a nice problem for Harrington to have. Certainly, the win in Portugal has opened a new window of opportunities on the European Tour as the three Final Series tournaments have big pots of gold, lots of world ranking points and also don’t have any cuts.
Harrington’s triumph in Portugal - his 15th on the European Tour and the 30th of his career worldwide - came on the back of three successive missed cuts following the Olympics. Surprised? Not a bit of it. “I’ve been saying for a good while that, in terms of control, it’s the best I’ve hit it; in terms of shape, hitting left-to-right and right-to-left, I’m very comfortable with how I’m swinging the golf club. And I’m putting much, much better; it’s probably the best I have hit mid-range putts in my life. So the birdie putts, the 10 feet to 25 feet, it’s the best I’ve ever putted. I thought, ‘once I get these two together, I’m prepping for a winning week’.” And that’s how it turned out.
Harrington also attributed his mindset to reading Dave Alred's latest book, The Pressure Principle. Of that bedtime reading in the build-up to the tournament, Harrington remarked: "It made me focus on my language, what I was saying to myself. My self talk! The upside of that was I was concentrating on it, thinking about it. I have been very relaxed off the golf course, had got my head in the right place. But, on the golf course, I hadn't. (In Portugal), I was not getting down on myself, I'd improved my physical posture on the course, as Dave would call it, 'my command posture'. I walked around the place like I owned it. There was a confident strut about me because I was talking nicer to myself."
It’s an approach he intends to bring with him from Turkey to South Africa to Dubai. “It’ll be tough to go win one of them, after winning it is not easy to win a couple of events. It’s obviously going to be tough. But I’m in good form and I am going to go out there and perform in each of them. I’ve certainly turned some nice corners in my putting considering what it was like a couple of years ago.”
Harrington had a new set of irons in his bag, having worked on their design too. “That’s the one thing Wilson do, bring all the clubs, all the ideas to the players in their original format, get us to put feedback in; if we don’t like them, they’ll change them. These irons were over a year in the making and I tested the test model back in May. This is the first set that’s come out, I’m the first player to put them into play, they’re a beautiful iron.”
Certainly, between the new irons and a new mindset, Harrington has found the winning formula to take with him for the rest of the season.
Harrington, though, is not in action in this week's WGC-HSBC Champions tournament in China. Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry are both in the field, while Séamus Power competes in the Sanderson Farm Championship in Mississippi on the PGA Tour.
