WHY WENTWORTH should prove to be such a barren outpost for Irish golfers down the years is a riddle at odds with success achieved elsewhere.
Only Harry Bradshaw, back in 1958, has managed to win what is now called the BMW PGA Championship; but even that lone success came at Llandudno, far from the leafy suburbs outside London, and so a 12-strong Irish contingent heads to the European Tour’s flagship event this week with a sense that one of them, at least, can contend and even succeed in the quest for the elusive title there.
World number one Rory McIlroy heads the Irish challenge, suitably buttressed by Graeme McDowell – runner-up to Nicholas Colsaerts in Sunday’s final of the Volvo World Matchplay – along with Darren Clarke, Pádraig Harrington, Michael Hoey, Shane Lowry, Peter Lawrie, Damien McGrane, Gareth Maybin, Paul McGinley, David Higgins and Barrie Trainor.
For Harrington, his love-hate relationship with Wentworth is finally erring on the side of love. “I really like what Ernie did, tee-to-green,” observed the Dubliner of Ernie Els’s redesign of the West Course.
Harrington, previously a critic of the poa annua greens, missed last year’s championship due to injury but returns this week on the back of a tied-15th finish behind Jason Dufner in the Byron Nelson Classic in Texas.
Although generally impressed with Els’s tinkering, where the South African widened fairways and added bunkering, it is the redesigned green complexes that most appeal to Harrington. He explained: “The change of greens is what I’d been calling for. The first year I played , the greens hadn’t settled. Players found it very difficult because there was no root structure in the grass at that stage, close to three months after laid. They’re small targets, tough targets, and needed settling.”
Ironically, the problem part of Harrington’s game this season has been his play on the greens. Is he ready to win again? “I do believe I can win. But I’m the kind of person who gets into contention a few times before a win, so I’m not quite thinking it is going to be out of the blue . . . I’m not saying if I get the chance I won’t take it.
“But I like where my game is at and, if there is anything that’s not quite right, it’s that I haven’t putted up to my standard for the last year. A lot is to do with not trusting my reading of the greens, trusting my lines . . . it’s a question of getting some confidence on the greens,” said Harrington.
McDowell flew straight from the south of Spain to London for the PGA Championship.
“I’m bringing good form and happy with how I’m playing. Even though I didn’t quite pull it off in Spain, my performance is still a nice boost coming into a crucial stretch of the season,” he said.
Incidentally, McDowell’s second place prizemoney and world ranking points from the matchplay in Spain has moved him into the fifth automatic spot in the Ryder Cup qualifying for the match against the USA in Chicago in September.
Europe’s captain Jose Maria Olazabal yesterday confirmed he will be selecting four vice-captains, hitting back at reports that he would only nominate two.
Claiming surprise at the reports, Olazabal attributed them to “some misunderstanding, but I want to make it clear I will be selecting four as agreed with US captain Davis Love at a meeting last September. I have said many times that as a vice-captain myself in 2008 and 2010 I learned that you need a lot of help that week. You need eyes, extra eyes to follow the players in the practice rounds to gather as much information as you can”.
