A trawl through 2014 with Pádraig Harrington seems a doomed enterprise even before we start. One top 10 finish all year – the fewest of his career. Thirteen missed cuts – easily the most.
Harrington began it ranked 131st in the world but with three tournaments left to play, he’s fallen to 337th. There’s no way of getting around it.
“Terrible,” is his verdict. “Didn’t perform well at all. Most weeks I got the worst out of the week rather than the best out of the week. At the end of the day you try and play well during the year but you want to get the few weeks where you get the most out of it. They are the big weeks. The majority of the year I got the worst out of my rounds.
“Performance-wise it was the worst performance I’ve had in my career, no doubt about it. I can go back to 2012 and that might have been a bit more disappointing because I played the best golf of my career and putted the worst; there was a big disparity in my game that year. I didn’t think I could get any worse in my career than 2013 but I did in 2014.”
Optimistic
Still, Harrington wouldn’t be Harrington if he didn’t insist on the tunnel only being the vessel leading him towards the light.
He touches the table in front of him so as not to jinx his current favourite stat: he has gone five full rounds without a three-putt.
Keep that run going, get his mental game onto the right plane and who knows?
“I would be quite optimistic about where my game is at. I feel optimistic. I feel good about it. I certainly know what I want out of the game. Whether I can do it or not will be the next question, but I’d certainly be reasonably assured about what I am trying to do.
“I am starting to putt better. I was a little uncomfortable the last two weeks coming out of Europe because the greens were slow. I found them (in the US) quick which just made me a little bit tentative. I probably didn’t perform as well on the greens as I could have because I am generally putting a lot better.”
The distance between where Harrington’s game stands now and where it once did seems vast, almost beyond comprehension. Yet he still sees himself as being not too far away from contending again at the very highest level. This is despite the fact that he hasn’t finished in the top three in an event since 2010.
Lower expectations
He admits that he has had to look seriously at whether he wouldn’t be better off lowering his expectations. At the same time, he doesn’t sound overly convinced by the prospect of it.
“I have questioned whether that is an issue,” Harrington says. “Because I have reached the height of my game, I wouldn’t get excited finishing 20th next week. Yet 20th next week would be a decent performance for me, if you know what I mean. It is unfortunate and that definitely could be an issue – it is all duck or no dinner at the moment.
“I have seen this in the past. The problem is you go out in the first round and you are nearly trying to win the tournament in the first nine holes because you want to be in contention the whole week. You want to win. But sometimes winning a tournament can be about a slow start, building up.
“Maybe I am getting frustrated quickly because I am trying to win the tournament from the word go. These are the things I have to thrash out and figure out, because there are so many good things in my game. I have to thrash out where the roadblocks are, what is holding me up.”
Ryder hopes
If and when he manages to remove those roadblocks, it’s still his ambition to play in the Ryder Cup in 2016 – his recent stint as a vice-captain at Gleneagles notwithstanding. Somewhere down the road, he would certainly hope that a turn as captain falls his way.
But for now, he's aiming to be a player and is unequivocal about who he thinks should be the European team captain when the competition is played at Hazeltine. It's between Darren Clarke, Miguel Ángel Jiménez and possibly Thomas Bjorn.
“I would have to say I am supporting Darren, absolutely. I think he deserves it. He’s been a big star in Europe for a number of years, he’s done a lot for European golf through the end of the 1990s, early 2000s and I think he’ll do a good job. I really can see Darren winning it.”
