Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CARNOUSTIE SMELL & BACK
It’s a devilishly difficult course that puts players through the wringer but Harrington is determined to enjoy every moment as he returns to the scene of his greatest triumph
HE’S back to “smell the roses” on his Carnoustie victory lap but Padraig Harrington reckons you can only be a success here if you tough it out.
It’s 11 years since the Dubliner’s first of three major title wins, a dramatic play-off triumph that launched a glorious 18-month period that had the golfing world in his thrall.
This is the first time since then that The Open has returned to the links overlooking the North Sea, rated by many – Harrington included – as the toughest course on the R&A’S rota.
Strange things can happen at Carnoustie, scene of the infamous van der Velde collapse in the Barry Burn that allowed Paul Lawrie to celebrate a record 10 shot Sunday turnaround and to claim the Claret Jug for Scotland.
Naturally, Harrington intends to drink in his return to the place where he joined the elite ranks in the sport.
“I will make the effort to enjoy myself this week,” smiled the 44-year-old.
“Hopefully that shows up because sometimes we’re working hard and put our heads down as we’re working, and sometimes it could be misconstrued.
“But I’ll make the effort to smell the roses.”
Harrington insists that the key to success is to be fluid – to thread the ball through the smallest of gaps but also to take out the driver and try to fly the fairway bunkers that are everywhere on the course.
“Then you come to the end of the golf course,” he added. “The last four holes can be brutish, at best.
“No matter how you’ve done in those first 14 holes, where you might have played well, and you could have a good score, you still have to get home.
“To have them the last four holes of a championship really is what makes Carnoustie as tough as it is.”
Harrington almost blew it on 18 himself in 2007. Not quite to van der Velde proportions, but still he needed a gritty up and down to break Sergio Garcia’s heart.
The Stackstown man ran away with the three-hole play-off that followed and it took almost a decade for the pair to bury the enmity that grew between them in the aftermath.
But that Barry Burn was never a favourite of Harrington’s, it turns out.
Yesterday, he explained: “I lost the British Amateur here in the last 16 back in 1992.
“I doubled the last two holes to lose by one hole.
“So I’ve got history with this golf course, and certainly the Barry Burn. “It’s all about 17 and 18. “It’s strange. Having played it in 2007, the tee shot on 18 was so difficult.
“And yet yesterday I played it, I hit 4 iron, wedge into 18 – and it would have been nice, it would have been easy if it was like that.
“As much it’s probably the toughest finishing hole in major golf, it’s based on circumstances – how you’re doing and what sort of conditions you’re playing in.
“I stood on the tee this week and I looked at where I hit it in the hazard, and you’re going, ‘Well, how could you hit it in the hazard in the conditions I faced this week?’.
“But it was easy enough done in 2007.
“This is why Carnoustie is such a great championship course.
“There are 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.”
Harrington’s up and down on the 18th broke Sergio Garcia’s heart