Harrington: Fixing what ain't broke?
AKRON, Ohio -- The last time Padraig Harrington lifted a trophy of any substance, he nearly popped a bicep. That was the Wannamaker Trophy, which a guy gets to hoist for winning the PGA Championship. You don't skate around with this one over your head, like the hockey players do with the Stanley Cup. If you want to lift-and-kiss, the way they do with the British Open's claret jug, then a guy is maybe risking damage to some abdominal muscles.“You cannot believe how heavy it is,” Harrington said. “It's phenomenal how heavy the trophy is.” Relatively speaking, of course. The PGA trophy weighs 44 pounds, which is no big deal for a guy who works for a living. But for a golfer accustomed lifting nothing much heavier than his driver, this would come as a shock.
Still, it beats not lifting a trophy, which is something Harrington has done - not lifting - since he hauled up that PGA cup just about a year ago. And sometime after which he took his game into the repair shop. He had won the 2007 British Open, then the 2008 British Open, and a month after that, he won the 2008 PGA, which makes three majors in a span of about 13 months, and for this, he figured, his game needed to be overhauled.
“I was trying to explain this to somebody,” Harrington was saying at Firestone Country Club Tuesday, where he was warming up for the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, and for which a smart betting man would give him a pass. “If somebody told me,” Harrington continued, “that I had to go to a desert island for the next two years and I would improve my game, the hard part would be telling my wife.”
(He said, laughing. No reflection on his wife, see?)
“Because that is what I do,” he said. “That's always been my makeup. If I thought that was the way to improve my game, that's what I would be doing. And the hard part for my wife would be telling the kids that we're moving.”
In a way, that explains why Harrington is now trying to fix something that ain't broke. He'd been doing pretty well for years, and then he had the streak that produced three majors in 13 months - although a big shakily at times - and then he felt compelled to change all that. At this point, Harrington, like many golfers, becomes obtuse.
Actually, less than that. Or more. Well, totally mysterious.
Did he get tired of hearing about this?
“A couple of times, my coach has come to me and said, everybody is asking me - they keep saying I'm changing your backswing or shortening your backswing,” Harrington said. “I find it quite funny because I've never tried to tinker at all with my backswing, which seems to be getting the most of the attention. I've been trying to tinker with the downswing, which is - you know, that's the nature.”
The nature. Of course.
He didn't elaborate.
“Everybody is looking and they see something, and they establish that that must be the point of what I'm focused on,” Harrington said. “If my backswing changed during the year, it was because I wasn't focused on it rather than I was focused on it. As I said, I was trying to change something in my downswing. And to be honest, I've been trying to change it for the last three years, but it became the priority over the last eight months.”
Perhaps something in the start down? The shoulders leading? The shoulders following? Laying off the club? Not laying it off? Loading? Not loading?
He didn't elaborate.
His record has been revealing, however. At least revealing that something's not working. In 14 starts on the PGA Tour this season, he has missed six cuts. His best finish was a tie for 11th in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and then a tie for 20th in the WGC-CA Championship, both back in March. It's been bleaker since then. Starting with the Memorial, he missed three straight cuts, including that in the U.S. Open, and in his last outing, the British Open, in which he was going for his third straight, he tied for 65th.
“I've been two and a half or three years trying to sort out the problem,” Harrington said. “I haven't done very well at sorting it out. But over the last eight months, I definitely got to the bottom of it, and I'm happy about that.
“It sometimes takes full-out focus on something to really get to the end of it. You know, a half-hearted trying to change it over the previous two years didn't work, but certainly I feel like I've figured out not what the problem was, but how to solve the problem for me.”
He didn't elaborate.
NOTES -- Fifty-two of the 80 starters are from foreign countries … It's down to the Bridgestone and the PGA Championship next week for player's to earn an automatic spot on the U.S. or International teams for the Presidents Cup, to be played at Harding Park in San Francisco in October … On the bubble: Justin Leonard with the U.S. and India's Jeev Milka Singh with the International … Tiger Woods and the hot start: In nine opening rounds of the Bridgestone, Woods has shot 68 or less each time, and won six times … When Vijay Singh won the Bridgestone last year, he became the first player in his 40s to win a World Golf Championships event … While the Bridgestone is being played, the rest of the tour will be at the Reno-Tahoe Open in Nevada.
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