His Loss Is Bigger Than His Win

After he won for the first time on the PGA Tour at the Honda Classic in March, Padraig Harrington couldn’t have felt much better. Two weeks later, he couldn’t have felt much worse when he found out that his father had cancer.

Doctors told the elder Harrington, a former police officer from Dublin, that his cancer of the esophagus was inoperable. Harrington could scarcely keep his emotions in check about his father, an avid golfer, but he tried to stay strong.

Then on the Monday before the British Open, Patrick Harrington died. Padraig pulled out the next day, and he has been struggling ever since.

“My central nervous system has been down, down, down all year,” he said. “My body is stressed out.”

There is a nine-week vacation coming up and it has Harrington’s name all over it, but until it starts Sunday night, there’s this $5.5-million Target World Challenge to think about. And Harrington’s in the race after his two-under 70 Friday at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, where Michael Campbell leads Harrington and Darren Clarke by three shots.

Fred Couples moved into a tie for fourth with Kenny Perry after a 68.

For Campbell, it was a strange day and an unfulfilling round of 72. He played the last four holes in four over, including a double bogey on the 18th, but still increased the lead he started with from two shots to three.

It might have been ugly, at least at the end, but Campbell was not complaining.

“It’s only a game. Big deal,” he said.

That’s what Harrington came to realize about what should have been his greatest year. Besides beating Vijay Singh in a playoff to win the Honda, Harrington won again the week after the U.S. Open when he sank a 65-foot eagle putt on the last hole at the Barclays Classic.

But when his father grew even more gravely ill, Harrington was at a loss.

“The two wins have made the year more stressful than anything else because I obviously got quite high when I won, and to be taken down so quickly, it’s a bigger knock-back for the body than anything,” he said.

“But, definitely, the nine weeks are very important to me. ... I think that’s the only way to get closure on those sort of things and come out strong next year.”

Harrington said he has lost 15 to 20 yards in driving distance because of the stress from his father’s death.

“From a golfing point of view, it physically and mentally really knocked the socks off me,” he said. “But, obviously, that’s really not an issue. Golf is not an issue compared to the other thing.”

Meanwhile, Tiger Woods shot his second consecutive par 72 and is only two shots out of the cellar, occupied by Colin Montgomerie at two-over 146.

With last place in the 16-player field worth $155,000, the penalty isn’t too severe, although Montgomerie was perturbed enough to trudge uphill to the locker room and ignore a group of fans gathered behind a rope waiting for an autograph.

Harrington, 34, belongs to an elite group of players who are among the best in the world but have not yet won a major. Montgomerie is working his way back into that group, which already includes Sergio Garcia, Darren Clarke and Adam Scott.

Harrington began the year ranked sixth and ends it ranked 12th. In his 15 PGA Tour events this year, he made $2.6 million and was 14th on the money list. He missed the cut at the Masters and the U.S. Open after learning of his father’s illness. He had only one top-10 finish after his father’s death, in October when he tied for seventh at the Tour Championship.

He said he had no real choice except to continue his normal schedule.

“It’s one of those things. I could have stopped in the middle of the year, but what good would that do?” Harrington said.

So it’s a nine-week break, a time to put the clubs away for a while, hit the gym, hit some golf balls again, get his energy back, then return in the proper frame of mind. He’s skipping the winners-only Mercedes Championships that kick off the year and probably won’t return until the Nissan Open at Riviera in February.

That should help him with the grieving process, although that’s a difficult journey to predict. But Harrington remembers his father’s advice on how to play golf:

“He would never tell me how to swing the club, but encouraged me to score well, and at the end of the day, that’s really where my talents lie.”