Changing times. The twenty-somethings strut around the place with all the confidence of pheasants to the manor born.
David Park, the newest winner on the European Tour, has discovered the sort of zone which older journeymen with aching bones and tweaking backs once entertained dreams about attaining but now realise they were thinking of cuckoo-land.
Two years older, and infinitely wiser in the ways of professional golf, Padraig Harrington and David Carter can appreciate fully the enormity of what Park, a 25-year-old Welshman plucked off the Challenge Tour by fate and circumstance, achieved in his two full tour events by finishing second in Morocco and then first in the north of England.
"What he (Park) did was quite phenomenal," claimed Harrington, who shoulders the bulk of Irish expectations this week.
Carter, the defending Irish Open champion, saw Park's endeavours at first hand in last weekend's European Grand Prix in Slaley Hall. "I'd never even heard of him before, to be honest," said Carter, "but to win like that was incredible. What impressed me most was his attitude. He never got annoyed."
Park's win earned him an exemption into the Irish Open. Without a manager, he picked up the telephone on Monday and organised his travel arrangements to Dublin. "We're a bit of a family team: my dad does the accounts, my mum does the washing and I arrange the travel and play the golf," he quipped.
It has been a whirlwind ride to the top for the former Welsh amateur who quit college life in the United States after just a year because he couldn't play enough golf. Two visits to the tour school proved unsuccessful, but the past few weeks have been the stuff of boyhood fantasy. "Three weeks ago I was playing in a tournament in Austria with a total purse of £50,000 . . . now I'm here as a winner on tour. "I don't know how it has happened. I haven't done anything different to my game, I just go out to play as well as I can and don't give myself any overall goals," explained Park.
This week's event has occupied Harrington's mind for over a month, a time-span when Park didn't dream of playing in the Irish Open. But Harrington, as a local lad in a prestigious championship, knew that much of his time wouldn't be his own once he reached Druids.
"I'm here about five hours and have probably done about one hour's practice," said Harrington. Any other week, those five hours would have contained about four hours and 55 minutes of solid work. "I'm not cribbing though," he said. "I'm delighted to meet so many people, friends from my amateur days."
Harrington has shed almost one-and-a-half stone this season through extensive gym work and looks well capable of meeting the physical and mental demands that Irish Open week places on a home player. But his eye is firmly on a top 15 place in the Order of Merit and on the world rankings in an attempt to make all the majors next season.
"That's why we play this game, to play the majors," he said.
Sweden's Per-Ulrik Johansson was yesterday forced to withdraw from this week's tournament due to an eye infection. His place in the field was taken by England's Stephen Bennett.
