It’s home sweet home for Pádraig
THE 18th hole at Carnoustie measures 499 yards from the back tee and played to an average of 4.6 when The Open last visited the Angus coast in 2007.
Back then, Pádraig Harrington was among those chewed up, just like he was in the Amateur Championship here as a raw rookie when he finished with a double bogey and lost his match.
So, what makes it such a brute?
From the rear of the tee yesterday, the out-of-bounds pegs were visible to the left, as was the serpentine Barry Burn, which slithers down one side of the hole, then the other before crossing in front of the green.
The tide was coming in at lunchtime and there was no way Jean Van De Velde, or Jacques Cousteau for that matter, would have tried to extricate a ball from the briny, shoes, or no shoes.
And yet, the hole known rather blandly as ‘Home’, was clearly shorn of its fearsome choppers.
For the big hitters, the worry was how to stay short of the burn from the tee, not how to ford it in two. For most, it was a three-iron and a wedge.
If the wind stays from the same south-easterly direction, the 18th will be a ceremonial doddle come Sunday. And that will rob this persevering layout of the grit that lodges in the corner of your eye.
‘The 18th is probably the toughest finishing hole in major golf,’ observed Harrington (right) yesterday.
‘I stood on the tee this week and looked where I hit it in the hazard in 2007 and was thinking, “how could you hit it in the hazard?” It was easy enough in 2007.’ It’s all changed at Carnoustie from 2007 when the headline writers had a field day with ‘carnage’ and ‘Carnastie.’ Right now, this curmudgeon is as cuddly as Paddington Bear and the pros are all set to exact revenge for Opens past. Harrington has as much history at Carnoustie as any. He contested the Amateur Championship here in 1992, the Opens of 1999 and 2007 — which he famously won — and plays here every autumn in the Dunhill Links. As he looked about the scorched earth, the burnt rough, he saw terrain he was unfamiliar with. ‘It’s a complete different course than the one in 2007,’ he said. And yet the gnarly seaside links, which spawned such golfing greats as Tommy ‘The Silver Scot’ Armour and the Smith brothers, Alex, Willie and Mac, will bend but will not break, according to Harrington, not with 13 par fours, more than any other course on the Open rota. ‘With only two par fives and three par threes, you’re not given a lot of options. ‘There’s always going to be shots that you’re just going to have to grow up and hit. You can’t hide all the time around Carnoustie,’ he warned. Rory McIlroy, who was working away on the putting green yesterday afternoon after an early morning 18, is among those who favour a driver off the tee this week, but Harrington advises a softly-softly approach.
‘I would be picking the guys who don’t necessarily hit it that long, don’t spin it that much, who will just thread it out there between the bunkers and they’ll end up playing a shorter course than some of the big hitters.’
‘You’ve got to be fluid when it comes to strategy. Even then, there is no perfect strategy that eliminates risk. The beauty of this course is that there is a lot of different ways of playing it.’
As the ‘defending’ Carnoustie champion, Harrington has been in demand in the run-up to the Open, giving hugely of his time to sponsors, Wilson, and for Sky.
He was called to the first tee yesterday for an interview with Sarah Stirk and subsequently fired a three-iron 255 yards into the breeze, to ‘allow for the slope which runs into the bunker at 265.’
His ball found the right side of the fairway and he jokingly asked Andrew Coltart of Sky to ‘run up and get it for me’.
Harrington needs to find as many fairways as he can from Thursday if he’s to foster dreams of becoming the oldest winner of the Open — a title currently the preserve of Old Tom Morris from nearby St Andrews.
Approaching 47, the odds are stacked against the Dubliner, especially as the greatest span between Open triumphs is the 11 years linking Henry Cotton’s wins of 1937 and 1948.
‘When you’ve won majors, you’re trying to live up to that. I’ve watched from the outside and said “I’m not going to make that mistake” but it seems inevitable for people that when they win a major, it’s hard to keep that momentum.
‘I’m certainly motivated. I’m pretty hungry,’ he said.
‘It would have been a lot smoother in my career if I won a major in 2007, 2012 and 2017. At the end of the day, it still goes down at three wins, and it always will, unless I make it four.’
Should Harrington stand on the 18th tee on Sunday in the mix for a fourth, no one will be better prepared for the 499 hard yards which lies ahead.