Philip Reidlooks back on the 2007 season and selects the year's best performances
A real class act, and known to pay unsolicited visits to maintenance sheds at various courses around the US where many of her compatriots are employed as greenstaff, the Mexican had two career breakthroughs in 2007: first, Lorena Ochoa dislodged Annika Sorenstam as the number one player and, then, she claimed her first major with a wire-to-wire victory in the British Open at St Andrews.
In all, Ochoa had seven victories on the LPGA tour this season, winning over $3 million in prize money and confirming her status as the new superwoman of the sport.
Woody Austin, at the ripe age of 43, had something of a breakthrough season that saw him make the US Presidents Cup team for the match at Royal Montreal in Canada, where the Americans retained the trophy. While his golf was impressive, Austin's input was also to show that not all players are mundane and boring. After all, this is a guy who once - at Hilton Head in 1997 - broke a putter by bashing it against his head after a particularly poor putt. On the second day of the Presidents Cup, playing alongside David Toms, Austin removed socks and shoes and donned waterproofs and attempted to play his partly submerged ball from a water hazard, only to lose his balance and fall back into the pond. In the third round of the Doral Open in March, Sergio Garcia three-putted the 13th green for a bogey. Rather than his heavy-handed putting though, it was what happened next that registered in people's memories. As he retrieved the ball from the hole, Garcia lingered and allowed saliva to fall from his mouth into the tin cup. In a sport that prides itself on etiquette, and given that other players had still to play the hole, it was a grossly offensive thing to do.
Afterwards, Garcia's apology was, well, less than apologetic. "I didn't spit, I just let it go down, it's no big deal. It did go in the middle and didn't affect anyone else . . . if it did, I would have cleaned it."
Only a short time earlier, the green jacket had been placed on Zach Johnson's shoulders as the new US Masters champion and the newest addition to the elite club of major champions.
Yet, on this Sunday evening in April, Pádraig Harrington could be found in a corner of the player's locker-room of Augusta National Golf Club scrolling through a computer, analysing and consuming the statistics among which showed him to be first in putting averages in the 71st Masters tournament.
It was a case of what might have been for the Irishman, who had finished seventh. But it was in that moment he truly believed he had developed into a player capable of winning a major, of fulfilling his destiny.
On that evening, Harrington was the only player left in the locker-room. As he manoeuvred the mouse on the computer, digesting the information on screen with all the due diligence of a stockbroker in the market, Harrington had just competed in the 35th major of his career, but felt that the learning curve was nearing an end.
Little was Harrington to know that he would miss the cut in his 36th, the US Open at Oakmont, where Angel Cabrera would become the season's second first-time winner of a major.
No, on this evening, Harrington was accentuating the positives. "Of course I'll be going home thinking 'what if?' But I'll also be going home knowing I don't have to change anything to win one of these things. It is not outside the realms of my imagination to win one. I don't have to go home (thinking) I have to rebuild my golf swing and get to be a better player to win one of these."
Come a Sunday evening in July, in the British Open at Carnoustie, Harrington would turn his words into deeds. In defeating Sergio Garcia in a four-hole play-off, Harrington - the first Irish golfer since Fred Daly in 1947 to win a major - got a taste of glory, and instantly wanted more.
"When Phil Mickelson was asked if he was ever going to win a major, he said, 'I'm going to win more than one major'. That's the importance of having a goal. If it does happen that you win a major, if it was your only and sole goal, if that's the ultimate of your goals, it's not far off the finish of your career.
"You always have to have goals to keep moving forward so I've always had it in my head to try and win more than one major."
Harrington's win was the stuff of real drama, of Tin Cup and Happy Gilmore, but with the type of true-life theatre that film scriptwriters couldn't create.
The Dubliner had woken on the morning of the final round six strokes behind 54-hole leader Garcia, but was aware that only one other player, Steve Stricker, three behind, was between the Spaniard and the group of seven players - comprising Harrington, Chris DiMarco, Paul McGinley, Stewart Cink, Ernie Els, Paul Broadhurst and KJ Choi - bunched together in tied-third. Andres Romero was a shot further back.
Garcia knew his lead was not entirely safe; and Harrington knew it too. So it was that Harrington's final round 67 to Garcia's 73 left the pair locked together on 277, seven-under-par, when all the numbers were totted up after the 72 holes of regulation play. Harrington had played aggressively, Garcia conservatively.
The upshot was a final day's play as riveting as any in recent major history, with the young Argentinian Romero also making a charge that had him sharing the lead with Harrington, until he finished double bogey-bogey. He would settle for a third place finish.
Harrington had been so caught up in his own final day charge that he was oblivious to Romero's move.
Harrington had played well, and entrusted his caddie, Ronan Flood, with the task of keeping an eye on the leaderboard. Part of the pact Harrington and Flood had made was how they would play the par-five 14th hole.
If Harrington needed to chase on, he would use driver.
If he had played his way into contention, he would use five-wood. So, when Flood handed him a five-wood on the 14th tee, it was the first confirmation of what was unfolding. When Harrington eagled the hole, he moved into the lead for the first time.
For Harrington, the great prize was within reach as he stood on the 18th tee. What followed, though, would find a place in the folklore of the sport. The 18th hole at Carnoustie is one of the toughest and the cruellest in golf. In 1999, Jean Van de Velde took a triple-bogey seven when a double-bogey would have been suffice to claim the claret jug. Harrington himself had been a victim in the British Amateur a number of years previously, in 1992, when he hit an approach shot out-of-bounds to lose to eventual winner Stephen Dundas.
So Harrington reached for his driver on the 72nd hole knowing that the claret jug was very nearly his. He had played the previous 17 holes impeccably, without dropping a shot.
But the drive was not a good one, pushed to the right, and with the end result blind to him from the tee it was left to the "oohs" and "ahhs" of the crowd to confirm that the ball had found the Barry Burn. In fact, it had almost avoided a watery grave, as the ball skipped tantalisingly along a footbridge over the hazard before falling in.
When Harrington reached the bridge, and walked across it in assessing his options, he was met by Garcia playing the 17th coming in the other direction. Garcia said "hello", Harrington simply nodded back, unable to get the words out.
His penalty drop was not a good one, and his five-iron approach - with 207 yards to the flag - was also poor. For the second time in one hole, the ball skipped into the Barry Burn, this time in front of the green.
Harrington's mind was swirling as he set off up the fairway, and it was left to Flood to take on the role of on-course psychiatrist to calm his man.
By the time Harrington reached the burn, his mind was again focused. He analysed the situation, took a drop close to the burn where the grass was marginally fluffier than the tight lie of the fairway, and then played an exquisite pitch to five feet. He still had to hole the putt for a double-bogey six and a round of 67; which he did. But he walked to the recorder's hut believing the British Open had slipped from his grasp.
But there was to be a lifeline: Garcia put his approach shot to the 18th into a greenside bunker and failed to get up and down to save par. Garcia's par-saving putt was a good one, looking for all the world that it would drop in, only to hit the hole and spin out.
It meant the Ryder Cup colleagues would go head-to-head over four holes to decide the 2007 Open champion.
Harrington had locked himself into the recorder's hut, with the sound on the television turned down, to watch Garcia's final moments of regulation play. When the Spaniard missed his par putt, Harrington was immediately focused.
The play-off took place over the first, 16th, 17th and 18th holes, and Harrington got off to a flying start with a birdie on the opening hole, to Garcia's bogey. On the 16th, Garcia's tee-shot hit the flag, but he could only manage par, while Harrington made a great up and down to keep his two-shot advantage. The 17th was also shared in pars, so Harrington could afford to take the conservative approach of playing his utility club off the tee down the last.
"Let's make five," was his thinking. "It seemed sensible to put the pressure on Sergio to make a three," observed Harrington.
The gameplan worked, as Garcia was forced to use driver, which he hit into the left rough, but he then produced a great shot to 20 feet to keep his dream alive. For the second time in an hour, Garcia thought he had made the putt on the 18th only for it to miss. When Garcia made his par putt back, all that was left was for Harrington to make his. He did, and he was British Open champion.
And the claret jug, the oldest prize in golf, had a new use. "Daddy, can we put ladybirds in it?" asked his four-year-old son, Patrick.
"We can, indeed," replied Harrington.
The major season had gotten off to an untypical cool start in Augusta in April where Johnson fended off a posse that included Tiger Woods to claim his first major.
Johnson, who started his professional career with the assistance of 10 businessmen in his native Iowa and earned a place on tour via the Nationwide Tour, finished with a 69 for 289, one over, which gave him a two-stroke margin over Woods, Retief Goosen and Rory Sabbatini.
There was to be another first-time major winner in the US Open at Oakmont as Cabrera - whose moniker is El Pato, or, in English, The Duck, for his lumbering walk - won the season's second major when his finishing total of 285, five-over, gave him a one-stroke win over Woods and Jim Furyk.
It was an astonishing breakthrough win for Cabrera.
His golfing education started as a 10-year-old in his native Cordoba in Argentina, where he caddied but, crucially, was allowed to play the course one day a week - on a Monday. When as a 20-year-old, he decided to turn professional, Cabrera was funded in the early years by fellow-Argentine tour player Eduardo Romero who took a percentage of his prodigy's prizemoney.
In contrast, Woods has known only the good times and his remarkable career continued at Tulsa when he won the 89th US PGA Championship at Southern Hills to win his 13th major. In doing so, he took another step in the relentless and obsessive chase of Jack Nicklaus's record haul of 18.
"Hopefully, health permitting and everything goes right and I keep improving, I'll one day surpass that . . . any time you're in conversations with Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus, Walter Hagen, it makes you understand you've had a nice run in your career.
"If you would ask me that 12 years into my career would I have had this many wins and this many majors, there's no way.
"I've exceeded my own expectations and certainly I am not against that," said Woods, who secured his US PGA win with a finishing round 69 for eight-under 272, that gave him a two-stroke win over Woody Austin.
Think of all that had happened to Padraig Harrington on the 18th hole at Carnoustie in the final round of the British Open that Sunday. His tee-shot had bounced off a bridge over the Barry Burn, finishing up in the hazard. He had taken a penalty drop that finished in a horrible lie. His third shot was caught heavy and again finished up in the burn, in front of the green.
Yet, for his second penalty drop of the hole, Harrington had the presence of mind to drop close to the burn on some fluffy grass where he noticed the mower blades had been lifted a little. With 48 yards to the pin, and rather than playing a pitch and run over the bumps and hollows, he bravely played a pitch shot that shot forward once and then bit into the green to finish up five feet from the hole.
