Padraig will want one last playing hurrah in 2018
PADRAIG HARRINGTON’s victory in Portugal, last Sunday, will have confirmed in his own mind that he is not yet ready to be a Ryder Cup captain.
I wrote in this column a few weeks ago that Padraig would be the ideal candidate to lead Europe’s fightback in Paris in 2018.
I still firmly believe that the Irishman would make a very good Ryder Cup captain. But now is not the right time when his golf seems to have been rejuvenated.
The nature of Ryder Cup captaincy has changed so much that it’s become a full-time two-year position.
Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke donated so much of their time to the event they could barely concentrate on their own golf games.
In my time, I was able to combine being captain, still playing a reasonable schedule on Tour and running the pro shop at Wentworth.
It only really got hectic in the couple of weeks around the match itself. I always felt that it was an honorary position, by and large.
Today, it’s almost a working role as the Captain has to be the main ambassador and figurehead for the event, especially for a home match.
Who can blame Padraig for not wanting to sacrifice two years of his career when he has just beaten a lot of the players who would want to be in the next European team?
Winning the Portugal Masters has got him back inside the world’s top 100. Now he is talking about trying to get back into the top 50 by the end of the year.
That shows he is still driven to do well. His victory will only give him extra motivation. He might even think he has one possible Ryder Cup left in him as a player.
If his career ended tomorrow, it would have been fantastic with his three Majors, including back-toback Opens.
But this has given him a second wind and now he has new targets. Plus, at 45, he is too young to be focusing on other people’s golf as a non-playing captain.
Look at Phil Mickelson. He is only a year older than Padraig, but he has just played arguably his best ever Ryder Cup and would have won The Open but for the brilliance of Henrik Stenson.
This was Harrington’s first win on the European Tour for eight years, but the seeds of recovery were sown with his victory at the Honda Classic 18 months ago.
The criticism aimed at him for many years was that he was golf ’s “Tinkerman”, fiddling with his swing in search of the “next level”.
Having won three Majors, he categorically did not need that.
But watching him in Portugal was to see a class player in action. Once they get into contention, their game moves up a notch. Under pressure, they pull off the great shots.
He was also a very popular winner. People respect how much time he puts in on the practice ground and they love it when the old-timers upstage these young whipper snappers.