Tag: padraig harrington

Categories
PGA Tour Champions

Breaking Bernhard Langers Winning Record on the Champions Tour: “An Incredibly Tall Order”

Image: Getty
Image: Getty

Bernhard Langer holds the record for the most wins on the Champions Tour with 46 victories. Padraig Harrington, 52 years old and therefore only recently eligible for the seniors tour, already has eight wins. Last Wednesday, Harrington was asked by a journalist whether he or another golfer would be able to break Langers record.

Padraig Harrington: “It doesn’t look possible or likely”

“No. I’ve tried to do the math on it as you would say, the maths as I would say. It doesn’t look possible or likely, but the reality is it mightn’t be me but all records are broken, that’s just the way it is.”

“When somebody sets a record, it’s a goal for somebody else and they’ll chase it down eventually. Certainly for myself, it would seem like an incredibly tall order. Yeah, he’s 67, still playing great, which is amazing and an inspiration to us all, but to get to his amount of wins I think is a step too far for me”, said Padraig Harrington.

Bernhard Langer: The G.O.A.T. of the Champions Tour

In terms of both the total number of victories on the Champions Tour and the number of victories in senior majors, Langer is the G.O.A.T. – Greatest of all time – on the Champions Tour. The German has won a total of 46 tournaments on the Champions Tour, twelve of them in senior majors. The US American Hale Irwin has won the second most tournaments – 45 in total. Lee Trevino is a distant third with 29 triumphs. The figures for Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player are also impressive. Both are known to have won a total of 27 majors in the “regular majors”. But the two Hall of Famers have also won a lot in the senior category, with a combined total of 17 victories in senior majors. However, Bernhard Langer remains the ultimate winner on the senior tour for the time being, even if it has been a while since his last victory. On July 2, 2023, he won the US Senior Open, his 46th and last tournament to date.

Categories
Professionals

Padraig Harrington Inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame

Padraig Harrington was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. (Source: Getty)
Padraig Harrington was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. (Source: Getty)

Padraig Harrington was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in Pinehurst. Harrington, who even at the age of 52 still works tirelessly on his game and is always striving to improve, expressed his gratitude for the constants in his career: his wife, to whom he has been married for 34 years, his equipment supplier Wilson, whom he has never changed, and his manager Adrian Mitchell. “I feel a deep sense of satisfaction and validation,” said Harrington. The Irishman, who has a total of 21 victories worldwide, including the 2007 and 2008 British Open and the 2008 PGA Championship, joins 19-time LPGA winner Sandra Palmer as the only living inductees into the Hall of Fame. “This really feels like a dream,” said Palmer, who threw both arms in the air as she was introduced to the 29 other members of the Hall of Fame. The posthumously honored members include LPGA great Beverly Hanson, former Open Championship winner and golf course architect Tom Weiskopf and former US Open champion Johnny Farrell. The remaining seven founders of the LPGA Tour – Alice Bauer, Bettye Danoff, Helen Dettweiler, Helen Hicks, Opal Hill, Sally Sessions and Shirley Spork – were also accepted as a group. The other six founders had previously been honored individually.

Padraig Harrington joins a select circle

Harrington grew up in Ireland with dreams of Claret Jugs and the Wanamaker Trophy, not so much the Hall of Fame. Still, he recognized the significance of the award, especially on the PGA Tour Champions, where many of his peers like Bernhard Langer, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Fred Couples are already members. “You look up to those guys and you want to be part of that group,” Harrington said last week. “A lot of the players on the Champions Tour were a bit before my time, so I looked up to them as role models when I turned pro.” For today’s generation of top golfers, Harrington now serves as a role model himself. In honor of Harrington’s induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame, 26-time PGA Tour winner Rory McIlroy had words of appreciation for the former star: “He really got this whole Irish golf movement going. Padraig was the one who made us all believe we could do it. He’s the ultimate professional.” Fellow countryman Shane Lowry also paid tribute to Harrington: “He was one of my role models growing up. He was fantastic for golf and fantastic for Ireland. We are very grateful for him.”

The Irishman had his breakthrough in 2007 at the British Open in Carnoustie, when he defeated Sergio Garcia despite a double bogey on the last hole. A year later, he won the British Open at Royal Birkdale and a month later became the first European winner of the PGA Championship in 78 years. In addition to his major victories, Harrington won three more on the PGA Tour, twelve on the European Tour and five in other international tournaments. He played on six Ryder Cup teams and was captain at Whistling Straits in 2021, even though Harrington had no plans to become a professional golfer, as he revealed in an interview with the DP World Tour.

Categories
Senior Tours

Langer aiming to make more Senior Open history

Bernhard Langer about to write more Senior Open history (foto:getty)
Bernhard Langer about to write more Senior Open history (foto:getty)

Langer is not planning on ending his career anytime soon

The German earlier this month became the most successful player in PGA Tour Champions history when he triumphed at the U.S. Senior Open, securing his 46th over-50s title and 12th Senior Major Championship.

In doing so, Bernhard Langer also became the oldest winner ever on PGA Tour Champions and he has no plans to retire anytime soon, with this week’s Senior Open providing another opportunity to make more history as he looks to secure a third victory at Royal Porthcawl, after his triumphs in 2014 and 2017.

Famous names in the field

There are a plethora of Major Champions, Ryder Cup Captains and proven DP World Tour and PGA TOUR winners on show in South Wales this week, including defending champion Darren Clarke who last year became only the fourth man to win both The Open and The Senior Open.

Fellow Open Champion Pádraig Harrington, who won back-to-back Claret Jugs in 2007 and 2008, will bid to join Clarke, Bob Charles, Gary Player and Tom Watson in that illustrious circle of winners, as will Scotland’s Paul Lawrie, the 1999 Champion Golfer of the Year.

The Welsh charge will be led by 1991 Masters Champion Ian Woosnam, as well 2021 Senior Open winner Stephen Dodd, who won his maiden Senior Major on Sunningdale’s Old Course and Bradley Dredge who is this week making his Legends Tour debut after turning 50 earlier this month.

The most recent Legends Tour Order of Merit winner, James Kingston, and the reigning Charles Schwab Cup Money champion Steven Alker will also tee it up on the Welsh coastline this week.

Some quotes of the players

Bernhard Langer: “Experience is important, and you know, we have different experiences. I probably have far more experience than most guys that are playing in the field. The reason being is I turned pro when I was 15 and I’ve been playing on tour since I was 18, so I’ve been playing a lot more tournaments than most of these guys even though they are similar age.

“Secondly, if you win tournaments, it breeds confidence and confidence breeds winning, so it helps to have good experiences, positive experiences. If you’ve been a playing pro for 25, 30 years and you’ve just been kind of mediocre, it’s hard to believe that you can win, I imagine, because you have not won anything yet or not a lot.

“That’s why I believe Tiger Woods was so dominant as well. He was used to winning and expected to win every time he teed it up and it made winning easier because that’s basically all he ever did to a large percentage. While you play 50 or 100 tournaments, and you don’t ever win or you’re not in the heat, all of a sudden you get in the heat and on the leaderboard, then it becomes like, oh, what’s going on and you know so it’s hard to cope with that I think. Some do it better than others but that’s just one part.

“I’m 66 in a couple of weeks. I’ve made millions of golf swings. I haven’t changed my swing. So I don’t need to practice and I’ve already done that swing hundreds of thousands of times. Does that make sense? When I was younger, I was still developing, one month working on this, one month working on that. Always changing, always evolving, and even though to you it would look the same.

“The time isn’t right yet. The goal is to win a few more. If I enjoy what I’m doing and still healthy, I’ll keep going. Right now I still feel well and feel like I can compete and if that’s the case, I’ll keep going and whenever the time is right, I hope I will know it and not bore you with an 82 or 84 and that kind of stuff.”

Pádraig Harrington: “The wetter the golf course, the better, but not the wetter conditions we play. If it rains for the week, rain and wind nullifies my driver because you don’t want to get going sideways. You’d be trying to knock it down all the time. If the rain dries up and the course stays soft, and it’s digging in and staying short into the next set of bunkers, that would play into my hands but I didn’t go out on the golf course and think, this is the golf course for me. I’ve turned up at Champions tour events, and gone, this is an ideal course, and if I don’t give myself a great chance of winning, I’m failing here this week. This is a great links golf course. Ball flight, ball shape, the direction you’re hitting, spin rates are all very important in terms of getting out there. It’s not necessarily raw speed that’s going to do the job.

“I was very happy with the game up through three rounds last week, and you know, then I started working on a few things so I’m with where I’m at. I’m looking forward to getting on the golf course and I could do with a few more putts and all professional golfers say that. I’m waiting to get out there and play. It is an interesting course. There’s a staggering of bunkers everywhere, so it’s not — I don’t necessarily go to a golf course and go, this is the one for me, that I can carry all of the trouble. The trouble is staggered nicely, so you’ve just got to play good golf this week. It doesn’t set up as a huge advantage to me, this golf course.”

Darren Clarke: “I’m looking forward to it. The last time played here at Royal Porthcawl was 1988 in the European Team Championships for Ireland, so I’ve sort of forgotten how wonderful the golf course is.

“I think I said last year whenever I did manage to win it, as soon as I turned 50 my goal and my dream was to win the Senior Open, the British Senior Open after winning the main Open, and I was able to change that last year. That being said, I’d dearly love to defend this week. When you walk into Royal Portrush, there’s a display cap there up on the right-hand side and both my replica Claret Jug and replica Senior Claret Jug are sitting side by side.”

Ian Woosnam: “It’s always great to have a major tournament in Wales. We’ve had the Ryder Cup here a couple of times. It’s a great spot. Let’s hope the rain does go over a little bit.

“Depends where the wind is blowing from. If it’s blowing off the sea it’s very difficult, and especially when you play like the second, third, fourth, they are tricky holes but it’s a lovely area. It’s right on the sea as you can see, and it’s a beautiful part of the world.

“I don’t play much golf these days. It’s more of a challenge getting around walking than playing golf but I’ll try my best and see what I can do.”

Categories
European Tour

DP World Tour: Irish stars relishing Mount Juliet homecoming

Shane Lowry looking forward to the Irish Open on the DP World Tour. (Credits: Getty)
Shane Lowry looking forward to the Irish Open on the DP World Tour. (Credits: Getty)

Pádraig Harrington, Shane Lowry and Séamus Power are excited to tee it up in front of the packed home crowds at Mount Juliet Estate for this week’s Horizon Irish Open.

The home favourites will be backed by Irish golf fans in their thousands, with a sold-out weekend and only a limited number of tickets remaining for the first two days, as all three players return to compete on home soil for the first time this year. Harrington, the 2007 winner of this event, arrives in County Kilkenny having secured his maiden Senior Major title at last week’s U.S. Senior Open at Saucon Valley, where he earned a one-stroke victory over fellow former Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker.

Power, the World Number 36, returns to his home Open for the first time in three years and the first time since becoming a PGA TOUR winner at the 2021 Barbasol Championship in Kentucky.

The highest-ranked player in the field at Mount Juliet is 2019 Open Champion Lowry, who currently occupies 24th on the Official World Golf Ranking, and arrives home off the back of an excellent run of form during which he has missed only one cut in 2022.

Australia’s Lucas Herbert will defend the title he won in wire-to-wire fashion at Mount Juliet last year, while Rolex Series winners Tyrrell Hatton, Thomas Pieters, Aaron Rai and Min Woo Lee will also tee it up this week. Make-A-Wish Ireland, the Official Charity of the Horizon Irish Open, will benefit from the Birdies for Wishes initiative this week whereby every birdie on the 18th hole at Mount Juliet during tournament play will result in a €500 donation to the charity.

PLAYERS QUOTES:

Pádraig Harrington: “It’s great to be back after a win. Great to have won on the Champions Tour.  I’ve gone out there for that very reason, to win, rather than play regular events and finish in the top ten.

“Coming here, the crowds, it was a nice atmosphere with people congratulating me. I’m sure it will be like that for the rest of the week. It can be tough being at your home Open, especially if you don’t play well or you’re in the middle of the pack and things aren’t going so well, you feel like you’re letting down the fans.  I think Mount Juliet lends itself to a great event. It’s got a great atmosphere. All the players are on site. So the players enjoy themselves, and with the crowds coming in, there should be a great buzz. Whoever wins here or gets themselves in contention this week will know all about it. I’m looking forward to it.

“The fans are out and it’s a great week, great venue, Mount Juliet, so I’m going to enjoy myself no matter what, wave to the crowds.  My display of golf today wouldn’t give you any great confidence about how the rest of the four days, but 24 hours is a long time in golf so I’m hoping that I’ll be well rested by tomorrow.”

Shane Lowry: “I say it every year, it’s always great to come back to this event. It’s kind of close to me, and I owe a lot to it for where I am in the game with the start that I had with the Irish Open in 2009 and it gave me the kick start to my career that I really needed. It definitely gave me one up on the rest of the guys around my level at the time. 

“It’s nice to come back here every year. I’m playing some good golf, and I’m just kind of excited for the week ahead, and I’m very hopeful that I put in a good performance. It’s been a nice stretch for me, and I feel confident, I feel good about my game. It’s just about managing expectation in a week like this really, but I feel like I’m doing that every week because I feel like every week I play now is such a big week, and every week I really want to do well. 

“I’d love myself to do well this week. I’d love myself to be the Irishman to do well. I think obviously Séamus or Padraig, or even anybody, we were all up there on Sunday afternoon, and one of us won it. So it would be great for the tournament and it’d be great for golf if that was the case.”

Séamus Power: “It’s one I’ve had circled on the calendar for probably six months now, it’s going to be great. I haven’t played since 2019 as obviously the last couple years with COVID has been tricky. I think it’s going to be sold out, and it’s going to be a great week.

“As soon as I saw the draw with Shane, I thought this is going to be pretty cool. Probably some of the biggest crowds that I’ve seen, I’d imagine, with Shane. I’ve known Shane a long time. Haven’t played a ton of competitive rounds as professionals together. We played quite a few practise rounds together, so I think it’s going to be really, really good out there. Big crowds and hopefully the weather is good. It’s a completely different experience for me. I’ve played in the States for a long time. I haven’t played that many Irish Opens, and obviously none really as someone near a featured group. 

“So it’s going to be a different experience. I feel like I have a good plan set up for it. At the end of the day, I’m going to start a golf tournament tomorrow morning. No matter where it is, I still have to be prepared, do proper warm-ups, having everything taken care of preparation-wise and see where my game stands.”

Categories
Highlights Tours Live

Padraig Harrington, the Captain at the helm of the European Team for the Ryder Cup 2021

Team Europe Ryder Cup Captain Padraig Harrington pictured with the Ryder Cup

Padraig Harrington is a professional Irish golfer who plays in the PGA Tour and the European Tour. Harrington has a long golf career, carrying three major championship victories on his back, his playing record speaks for itself. Harrington collects a total of 15 European Tour victories. The Irish golfer showed manners since the begining, raising his first trophy little more than six months after turning professional, in 1996 at the Peugeot Spanish Open with a six shot lead.

According to the European Tour official reports, Harrington became the first European to win back-to-back Major Championships by adding the 2008 US PGA Championship to the 2008 Open Championship crown he won a month earlier, having successfully defended the Claret Jug at Royal Birkdale, and climbing up to T3 in the OWGR. He had also previously won the 2007 Open Championship in Carnoustie, Angus, Scotland, finsihing with a total of 7-under par and ranked T6 in the OWGR.

European Captain Padraig Harrington is in a mission for the Ryder Cup 2021.
In 1999, Harrington accomplished his ultimate goal as a player when he qualified for the European Ryder Cup at the “Battle of Brookline.” The Irish golfer participated in other five occasions (1999, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010).
This year, in 2021, Padraig Harrington is tasting the was selected to develop one of the hardest tasks within the golf world, and that is to put the Captain hat on and to lead the entire European Team to glory during the 2021 Ryder Cup.
His responsibilities started to be on the spotlight when it was time for him to announce the Captain’s picks for this year.

Harrington felt the preassure throughout the process of picking his players, which he narrowed down to three after the first announcement. Finally he published the twelve players and that handful of doubts disappear and all the focus moved into a clear goal and the purpose behind the Europe Team and the Ryder Cup. It is time to get familiar with the course and plan on the best way to execute the strategy that will make Europe touch the sky once again.

The power of the Europe team bound behind the Ryder Cup.
Sergio Garcia, the Spanish golfer who is also one of the last three Captain’s pick, shared a long part of his golf career period with his now Captain Padraig Harrington. However, they are not friendship goals by all means, the competitiveness and strong personalities marked the difference and did not play in the favor of them getting along. On the positive side, they both appreciate each other’s game and work regardless, and Captain Harrington is convinced that the Ryder Cup is bigger than that and the team bound will improve their relationship.

The power of the Europe team bound behind the Ryder Cup.
Sergio Garcia, the Spanish golfer who is also one of the last three Captain’s pick, shared a long part of his golf career period with his now Captain Padraig Harrington. However, they are not friendship goals by all means, the competitiveness and strong personalities marked the difference and did not play in the favor of them getting along. On the positive side, they both appreciate each other’s game and work regardless, and Captain Harrington is convinced that the Ryder Cup is bigger than that and the team bound will improve their relationship.

“It was a tough decision” as he explained in several interviews but he followed his professional criteria and closed a solid team ready to take all chances to bring the trophy home. Harrington believes that it a very strong balanced team where every individual player has the right and the will to play every single match, although that is not possible.

Check out the list of the players committed to the European Team

Categories
Team Ireland

European Tour: Padraig Harrington Speaks on Long Absence From Omega Dubai Desert Classic

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - JANUARY 24: Padraig Harrington of Ireland plays his second shot on the sixteenth hole during Day Two of the Omega Dubai Desert Classic at Emirates Golf Club on January 24, 2020 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

European tour professional and major championship Padraig Harrington speaks with the media following round 1 of the Omega Dubai Desert Classic.

European Tour: Padraig Harrington speaks to the media following opening round of Omega Dubai Desert Classic

Q. Just how good is 71, 1-under par, feel in those conditions?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah I’m happy because I finished strong. I 4-putted second hole today, my 11th, so at that stage, I had thrown away a few shots. I did the same at the par 5, 13th. I took four shots from nowhere. I was feeling bad. But it really got windy on that last nine holes and I made a couple of really good up-and-downs. I’m pleased with the finish.

Q. Give us your opinion on the way the golf course is playing. Some players are coming in saying it’s too firm to be this narrow and you can’t get it on the fairway.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Well, I’m happy with my driving. It is tough to hit the fairways. But it’s not playing long with the heat.

Full Leaderboard: Omega Dubai Desert Classic 2020

If you want to sort all the professional golfers out, just give us firm greens. The chip on the last hole, probably had 40 feet of green and all I’m worried about is chipping it in the water on the far side. Firm greens really sort us out and we find it difficult. If you do miss the fairways, coming into firm greens, it’s very difficult. Firm, fast greens, I could see guys, if you get on the wrong side of things today, you would be moaning. If you’re on the right side, you’d think this is the way golf should be.

Q. You’ve played this championship seven times before but not since 2004. Is it Ryder Cup Captaincy that’s brought you back?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I’d normally play farmers in the States at this time of the year, but I want to be around the European players. And these are the big events on The European Tour; they always have been in the Middle East. As Ryder Cup Captain, I felt I should come.

I’m delighted to be here, as well. I think they are important events, but they are also some of our best events in Europe; the quality of the golf courses and the conditions, they are good events to play in for sure.

January 23, 2020

Dubai, UAE

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports