Before Padraig Harrington teed off at the B&H International Open at Wentworth this week, before he sorted out his clubs or assessed the course, before he went through his mental exercises to focus on the goal ahead, he ensured that there was a good supply of pens in his bag.
Two years ago in the same tournament played at the Belfry, Harrington was subject to one of the cruellest punishments known in world sport. While sprinters can be awarded gold medals with the content of a pharmacy rattling around in their systems, and while the Football Association can receive not much more than a gentle tickle across the knuckles despite the violent racist behaviour of an alarming number of England followers, Harrington was disqualified on the spot for the appalling crime of failing to sign his scorecard.
He was leading the event by five strokes, looked a shoo-in for the £150 000 (about $241 199) first prize and the criminal card in question marked a round that was a record for the tournament.
Indeed, that was the reason the misdemeanour came to light in the first place. No one spotted that the card wasn’t signed by the player until the owner of the hotel at the Belfry asked if he could frame it as a memento to hang on the clubhouse wall.
At that point the rule book winched into action: rule six, sub-section six, as it happens. Sure, Harrington was told, you have played brilliantly, hit a record round that everyone wants to commemorate, but you did not sign your card and so you are out. Which raises a rather important question for the player: if it is so essential to sign the thing, why did he forget?
Especially since he is a qualified accountant, taught to understand the value of keeping paperwork in order.
‘Ah, well, yes,†he said, smiling about it now that time has had a chance to erode the pain.
‘We’d come in off a cold, wet course. A really tough day to play golf. We sat down on the bench and Jamie Spence was marking my card. And he passed the card across to me, with Michael Campbell sitting in the middle. When Michael sees the card he just signs it, maybe he thinks it’s his own. So the card is just left sitting there for a few seconds. When I picked up the card, I checked the scores and then I checked that the signatures were there. And, of course, they were. The fact they were the wrong signatures –well, as I said, it was a tough day.â€
Few could believe the dignity he showed at the time. He reacted to the bureaucratic madness with a calm that it is hard to imagine ever being replicated in other sports. Presumably that is something that golf teaches a player: when you are engaging with a sport as precious as this about its rules, it teaches you to be philosophical about life’s travails.
‘It’s an interesting question, but I’m not so sure of the answer,†said Harrington.
‘Does golf make you or does it just reveal who you are? I used to think that it builds character. Now I’m not so sure about that. I think it just reflects who you are.â€
But surely through the promotion of good habits and honesty in an entirely self-refereed game, golf must teach a player a lot?
‘Oh sure. But I do worry about young kids playing golf as their only sport because it is a selfish game. It’s a little bit like tennis. And in a slightly immature mind, they can learn bad things from it rather than the many good things. I like to see kids playing golf, but I like to see them playing team sports, too. Because you have to understand about winning and losing and that’s a lot easier when you’re playing team sports.â€
The son of a policeman who founded a force golf club, Harrington himself was a football goalkeeper well into his teens when, he says, he realised that it was probably more fun to go off winning golf tournaments than to stand around in the rain picking balls out of the back of the net every weekend. So, brought up used to the requirements of a team dressing room, he revelled in last season’s Ryder Cup.
‘I think the Ryder Cup is almost unique in all sport, not just golf, because of the incredible intensity of that last day. It’s all happening at the same time in 10 different places. To watch that is great, to play in it was just incredible.”
And can the player enjoy it at the time?
‘What I actually tried to do was go in with the attitude that I would enjoy it as long as possible. So many times in sport you’re thinking: ‘Hmm, this is work, get down to it.’ I set out with the determination to enjoy the tournament; I didn’t do any practice the week before. I went out just to have fun, to bank it in the memory.â€
And what about the emotional legacy of the tournament? How hard is it to stop blubbing with pride and get back to playing golf for a living?
‘I think when it comes down to it, a lot depends on your general preparation and fitness level. I’m pretty fit and have good routines, which meant I could play the following week. Get back into it, get back to work.”
It probably helped, too, that Harrington has never touched a drop of alcohol in his life. Intriguingly, the way he can dismissively recall that he won a tournament the week after the Ryder Cup shows how much Harrington has progressed as a golfer.
Three or so years ago, the memory of a victory would have been far less
casually thrown into conversation. Back then he was known as the golfer who always came second, the Paula Radcliffe of his sport. That was why the B&H debacle hurt so much: at last he had victory in his sight. But, like the great British distance runner, he has made the transition in the past year to the top of the winners’ podium and he is now the leading golfer in Europe. And, he says, it didn’t take very much to make the step up.
‘I never got really stressed about being second. Not every time, but most of the time I came second, there was a logical reason for it. So I took the attitude of ‘right, I’m good enough to come second, I can see what’s needed to make the step to first, and will do what I need to do.’ I always felt I could get better and there’s only one place to go if you improve from second.”
Now that he has got to number one, the work doesn’t end for this ardent pragmatist. If he ever forgets the pain of failure that propelled him to the top, he can always pop round to his parents’ house, where there is a framed cutting of him at the B&H back in 1998, when he took 13 strokes on the par-five 17th.
‘One thing I regret about that day is that I signed the card for that round,†he says. —