TOUR NEWS:THE FATTENED wallet will provide a little solace to Pádraig Harrington, who has yet to win a tournament on tour this season. In securing his fifth top-10 finish from as many starts in Sunday's BMW Championship – where Tiger Woods was a runaway winner – the 38-year-old Dubliner brought his earnings stateside since ending his run of missed cuts at the British Open in July to almost €1.3 million and is well-positioned to add further lucre at next week's Tour Championship.
That Tour Championship has €5.1 million in tournament prize-money, but there is a further €24 million more available in FedEx Cup bonus money. The winner of the FedEx Cup will net €6.8 million, and while Harrington – in sixth place in the standings – must now rely on what the five players ahead of him do at East Lake in Atlanta, he still has a strong mathematical chance to claim the biggest financial prize in sport.
Harrington – who has moved up to eighth in the latest world rankings – had a corporate day in Chicago yesterday and will take part in an advertising shoot for Titleist today and is due to arrive back in Dublin tomorrow for a short, four-day break with his family before returning to the US for the Tour Championship, an event he has played in on three occasions previously. His best finish is tied-seventh (in 2005) but he showed a liking for the famed East Lake course when shooting a first round 63 there in 2007, his last appearance, en route to a tied-11th finish.
The revival in Harrington’s season continued at Cog Hill in the BMW, his streak since Turnberry comprising tied-2nd at the Bridgestone Invitational (€455,000), tied-10th at the USPGA (€103,000), tied-second at the Barclays (€339,000), tied-fourth at the Deutsche Bank (€212,000) and tied-sixth at the BMW (€178,625). He has earned €1,286,000 in prize-money in those five tournaments, bringing his season’s earnings on the US Tour to €1,566,000 and his career earnings on that tour to €12m.
Harrington is one of only two Europeans (along with Luke Donald) to earn a ticket to the Tour Championship, which is confined to the top 30 players on the FedEx Cup standings. However, destiny has been taken out of his own hands in relation to winning the FedEx Cup as even a win in Atlanta might not be sufficient and the Irishman will be reliant on what those ahead of him in the rankings do. Woods, Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson and Heath Slocum all head into the final counting event knowing that a win at the Tour Championship would also be enough to claim the FedEx Cup.
On recent form, though, Woods – whose victory in the BMW was his sixth of the season and moved him back to the top of the FedEx Cup standings ahead of Stricker - is the man very much in the driving seat. Since he missed the cut at the British Open, Woods has gone on a run of 1st-1st-2nd-2nd-11th-1st that, despite failing to win a major, will most likely earn him player of the year status (again!) on the US Tour.
Woods believes the restructuring of the FedEx Cup points will lead to greater excitement next week in Atlanta. “The whole idea of the play-offs was to get into the top-five. And now it’s basically a sprint. It’s one tournament, a sprint, assuming one of the top-five guys wins the tournament. But if it doesn’t, then what you’ve done in the play-offs previous to that will certainly help you to win the championship if none of the top (five) guys win the tournament.”
Sunday’s win was Woods’ first since the Bridgestone Invitational last month, but he felt it had been coming. “Winning, that’s the ultimate goal. To play as well as I have of late and not get the Ws has been a little bit frustrating, no doubt, because I’ve been so close . . . it’s just been a matter of making a couple of putts here and there, and I would have won the tournaments. And lo and behold, boom! I hit the ball just as well, just as consistent this week, and I made a few putts. And that’s how it happens.”
Woods has moved his career total of wins on the US Tour to 71, with only Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead ahead of him. But the world number one is most pleased about his consistency having returned from knee surgery.
“I’ve top-10d just about every week I played and obviously had six wins. To come off a knee surgery and to have this type of year, to be this consistent, is something that I’m very proud of. Absolutely, it’s one of my best years. There’s no doubt about that.
“You know, I haven’t won as many times as I did in 2000, didn’t win any majors this year, but certainly I’ve never had a year where I’ve been this consistent, either, this many high finishes and to have an opportunity just about every time I tee it up to win the championship on the back nine, you know, that’s something that I can’t tell you how proud I am for, the job that my trainers and Hank (Hainey) did to help me get to this point.”
