With the No. 1 player out for the rest of the year, golf had a job opening for a player with nerves of steel and a nose for the finish line. It found such a man at Oakland Hills, a 36-year-old Dubliner who talks like a leprechaun, putts like a Tiger and can't stop winning majors no matter how seismic the weather and/or medical obstacles in his path.
Squeezing 27 holes into one amazing Sunday, Padraig Harrington made clutch putts on the last three holes to shoot his second straight 66 and win the 90th PGA Championship by two strokes over Ben Curtis and Sergio Garcia. Harrington has won three of the last six majors and becomes the first European to win the PGA since Tommy Armour in 1930. He is the first European to win the British Open and the PGA in the same year, and the first European ever to win two consecutive majors.
"I don't know how other people are going to feel; I know I love the idea of the back nine of a major on a Sunday," said Harrington."I love it so much that I'm actually disappointed I'm seven months away from the next major, and I don't know what I'm going to do."
Thunderstorms forced officials to stop play at 2:16 p.m. Saturday, and ultimately to cancel the third round with the final three pairings yet to tee off. That forced a mass start at 7:15 a.m. Sunday, in cold, windy conditions.
It was, in other words, Harrington's kind of day. He made four straight back-nine birdies to complete his first 66 of the day and get into the second-to-last threesome with Garcia at one over par for the tournament, three behind Curtis.
For much of the final round Sunday, Garcia, still winless in the majors, seemed destined to break through. He flushed a drive down the middle of the first fairway, hit a sand wedge to five feet and made the birdie putt after Harrington had missed his own try from 14 feet.
Garcia's drive on the par-5 second hole went right and settled into a bad lie, but he took a vicious cut at the ball and watched as it ran onto the green and stopped four feet from the pin. He made the putt for eagle and was two ahead of Harrington but a shot behind Curtis, who had also birdied the first.
Putting has always been El Nino's bugaboo, but he looked comfortable with the flatstick for most of Sunday. It was enough to bring memories of the 2004 Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills, when Garcia made five birdies in eight holes to dust Phil Mickelson, 3 and 2.
At his low point, Garcia tried left-hand low, right-hand low, the long putter, the belly putter, even two putters in case one went on strike. That was at the WGC-Accenture Match Play in February, when he began working with putting guru Stan Utley.
"My main idea was to get back to the way I used to putt," Garcia said at the Player Championship in May, which he went on to win. "Like 10 or 12 years ago when I was a good putter."
It seemed he had accomplished exactly that on the front nine Sunday. Garcia got to three under at the sixth hole, converting a five-foot birdie putt to briefly tie Curtis for the lead. Two par saves on the difficult eighth and ninth holes got Garcia through the front nine in just 31 strokes.
"It looked like his day," Harrington said. "Especially through eight and nine. He's made two really good up-and-downs, he's holing the putts, and this is an area he's struggled at in the past, and it looks like it's going to happen for him."
Garcia lost his tee shot left on the par-5 12th hole, and Harrington also drove wildly, leaving himself behind a tree off the tee. Already trailing Garcia by two shots, he was at a crucial juncture.
"I took the shot on; I knew I had to from in the trees," Harrington said. "The tree was actually blocking where I was aiming, so I literally had to hit like I was hitting through the tree for my second shot."
Using his trusty 5-wood, the same club he hit to the green on the 17th hole at Birkdale, Harrington avoided the tree and his ball went over the green. His pitch nearly went in and rolled four feet past the hole, setting up his birdie.
Garcia could make only a par; Harrington was just one shot behind. After Garcia hit an indifferent 6-iron to the front of the green on the par-3 13th hole, nowhere near the pin, Harrington hit his tee shot at the stick, leaving himself a 15-foot birdie putt to tie, which he made.
It seemed unlikely that Harrington would ever get to this point, and not just because he began the tournament with rounds of 71 and 74.
"I wasn't happy with how I was swinging the golf club this week in terms of my focus or maybe dehydration or tiredness," he said, "but something had me a little bit off my stride this week. My coordination wasn't quite there."
Harrington was a basket case at the end of Friday's round, when he hit his drive on the eighth hole into the corporate tents, and followed that up with a 4-iron to the par-3 ninth hole that went 40 yards left of his target.
But your PGA champion is the type of guy who thrives on adversity. He wears his perseverance as a badge of honor, and after calling his trainer, they determined that maybe he had simply been dehydrated. He resolved to drink more water, and hoped that his fine motor skills would return.
Saturday's rain hydrated everything at Oakland Hills, and by Sunday, Harrington's game was in full flower. With Curtis and Henrik Stenson seemingly fighting their swings, the tournament was in danger of turning into a two-man race.
But Curtis reached the 12th hole in two shots, his ball rolling onto the back fringe. He got up and down for birdie to get back to two under, one back. Stenson bogeyed the hole to fall to even par.
Garcia and Harrington drove wildly on 14, but while Garcia managed to find the green with his approach, Harrington's second shot came out hot and went over the back, and he made bogey to fall one behind again.
Both players hit their approach shots close on 15, Garcia's ball hitting the flagstick, but neither man could convert his birdie putt. Curtis birdied 14, an event witnessed by maybe 25 people that nonetheless tied him with Garcia.
The final three holes at Oakland Hills are brutally difficult, and once again they separated the winner from the rest of the field. It started when Garcia hit his 6-iron approach shot into the pond guarding the 16th green. The ball touched down on land but kicked right into the water.
"There's no doubt that was the opportunity I was looking for," Harrington said. "That was the opening of the door."
Leery of doing the same thing, he missed his own approach shot left, his ball landing in a greenside bunker. Garcia took a drop some 50 yards in front of the green and pitched to five feet behind the pin, while Harrington splashed out 20 feet past it when a rock got between the ball and his clubface.
But Harrington has become positively Woods-like on the greens. The bigger the putt, the more likely he is to make it. He did it again on 16, and Garcia made his short bogey putt. Again, they were tied. Curtis was also at two under. His group had fallen a hole behind due in part to the troubles of J.B. Holmes (81), and Curtis had pulled his drive and bogeyed 15 to create a three-way tie at the top.
Harrington hit first on 17, and flew his 5-iron straight at the pin, setting off a loud celebration when his ball settled eight feet behind the cup. Garcia rifled his tee shot stone dead, the ball settling four feet left of the hole, detonating another wild celebration.
The players walked to the putting surface and didn't know which ball was which. When Harrington realized he was away, he thought as Woods would: He had a chance to get in the hole first, and he did.
"If I holed this, I probably would win the PGA," he said. "If I missed, Sergio would probably win the PGA. So it was down to that. And I hit a lovely putt."
Garcia pulled his four-footer, and the ball caught just a sliver of the left side of the cup. It was his first bad miss all day.
"I felt good with my game, I felt really good with my putting," Garcia said. "I'm sure you guys will find a way to switch it around, but you know I really felt like I putted great today and, you know, just a couple of putts didn't want to go in, but you can't do anything about that."
Both players lost their drives right on 18, Garcia landing in the rough and Harrington in a fairway bunker. While Garcia went for the green in two and came up just short in the front bunker, Harrington could only try to lay up from the trap. He left his ball in the rough, and the crowd groaned, but he caught a good lie. His next shot, a 7-iron, settled 15 feet to the right of the pin. Harrington made the double-breaker to drain any suspense from Garcia's par putt, which he missed.
When the week began, it figured that a European would win, given Europe's stellar performance at the 2004 Ryder Cup, also held at Oakland Hills.
Harrington went 4-1-0 for that team, and Garcia 4-0-1. Still, it was shocking how much Sunday's final round resembled Sunday at the 2007 British Open at Carnoustie, where Harrington beat Garcia in a four-hole playoff. Even the cooler-than-average weather at Oakland Hills, a mixture of swirling winds, spitting rain and the occasional ray of sunshine, felt British.
"It was worse when I finished the Open Championship than right now," Garcia said, remaining understandably upbeat after shooting 69-68 in his third and fourth rounds. "I feel like, you know, to shoot 69-68 on the last two rounds at a major on a course like this, I think it's pretty positive."
Curtis, the forgotten man, earned a spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team with his tie for second place. Phil Mickelson made a run with birdies on the second, third and fourth holes to get to one over for the tournament, but bogeyed the eighth, 11th and 14th to shoot 70. The 38-year-old lefthander, the No. 2 player in the World Ranking, has now gone two years in a row without a major title.
Harrington has tied Mickelson with three career majors, and while he is still technically third in the world, he's closing fast. What's more, Harrington becomes a viable candidate for Player of the Year, an honor Woods seemed to have locked up despite only playing for the season's first six and a half months.
Like Woods, Harrington seems to have arrived at a mentality, equal parts self-reliance and unwavering focus, that is particularly suited to major championship golf.
Article Source: golf.com
