Pádraig Harrington still searching for vital stimulus

There is a very simple reason why Pádraig Harrington walks around backwards. Not always, of course; just sometimes.

“I am made out to be mad enough as it is,” he quips of being spotted walking backwards – something done mostly in the privacy of his house or hotel room but an act occasionally to be witnessed outdoors – before explaining it is all about strengthening his glutes, calves, quads and hamstrings.

It’s not unusual for athletes to do it, why not him?

Why not indeed, for Harrington – as the man who started the glut of Irish players who have claimed golf’s Major titles inside the past decade – doesn’t need to justify anything to anybody.

Sure, he is his own man, and his way has fashioned for him a career among the very best of the modern game. With three Major titles, he is ahead of the likes of Greg Norman, Bernhard Langer, Jose Maria Olazabal in bragging rights. Not that you'd likely hear him indulge in such an exercise.

Harrington’s three Major successes – in the 2007 Open at Carnoustie, the 2008 Open at Royal Birkdale and the US PGA of 2008 at Oakland Hills – came in a whirlwind, a madcap period that saw the Dubliner rule the fairways and invariably close the deal.

It was all encapsulated by those scary eyes, his focus so powerful that he wasn't even aware that those eyes possessed the power to intimidate. He did. Ask Sergio Garcia.

Claret Jug

The eyes don’t intimate so much anymore, perhaps due to a new maturity. This will be Harrington’s 19th appearance in the British Open, a sequence that started back in 1996. The only time he failed to tee up was in 2005, here at the Old Course, when his father, Paddy, died. Two years later, he was lifting the Claret Jug and filling it with ladybirds at the request of his son, Patrick. Now, it would seem, he is striving to rediscover that freshness.

“I still love playing golf,” he says. “But I can’t play the same way I played seven, eight years ago; that’s just nature, I am a different person. I have to find some way of . . . There’s no innocence in me whatsoever, none whatsoever. When it comes to this game, there ain’t any innocence. You dream; but its a different kind of thing.

“When it comes to golf, I’d be much more cynical than I was as a kid, wandering around thinking I was going to find all the answers. It intrigues me, it would be nice to figure it out.”

The thing is, there are weeks when he does figure out what it takes. Harrington did it earlier this season on the PGA Tour when, surviving on sponsors’ invitations, he changed his status with a win in the Honda Classic that meant no more begging letters and a full PGA Tour card through to the end of 2017.

Short notice

“I need to find something in my head. I still hold out hope that it is possible to find. The Honda gives me hope that it is possible to find and it can work at short notice, but I do need to find some piece to click.

“It’s completely internal, completely in my own thinking,” he admits.

Is he lacking inspiration? Is it hunger? Who knows for sure what piece he is looking to click into place.

“That’s just the nature of the game,” he remarks of that search.”

“You’d look long and hard to find anybody who has achieved their goals in this game and is still playing and competing after 19 years. It might be one in a hundred that’s still competing after achieving their goals . . . . just think of the guys who have won Majors, I’m thinking of Faldo, Woosie, Lyle, Seve, Olazabal, just pick any of them. Once they achieve their goal, it’s hard to keep going.

Retire gracefully

“In another sport, after 19 years of a career you’d be allowed to retire gracefully. People would just say, ‘ah, he lost a yard of pace’, instead of trying to analyse to the nth degree.”

Yet the fact of the matter is that Harrington, in this, his 19th Major, is the one analysing more than anybody, seeking that fix so that he can compete and contend.

He keeps on going, keeping up the search for whatever internal link will provide the key to the lock.

“The great thing with me is that I know, if I can get myself in the hunt, I actually get better. I will be better down the stretch that I would be not being under pressure. So that’s a nice thing for me. If I can get there, I am okay,” he says.

In the past, he has won twice on the Old Course . . . in the Dunhill Links, not an Open. But they are memories to work with.

“I’ll be a lot happier to see it soft. Definitely a lot happier for me, that will suit me. I just think it’s going to be more like the Dunhill. When it gets really too hard and fast you can’t hit low shots, there’s no point, it releases too much.

“So I’ll be able to play more wind shots if there’s a little bit of give in the green than I would be if the greens were rock hard.”

No backward thinking. Just forward, looking ahead. Same old Harrington in that way.