CARNOUSTIE, Scotland – Irish eyes are smiling today. They’re crying tears of joy, too.
Padraig Harrington is the British Open champion, and you can bet your last pint of Guinness that the Temple Bar section of Dublin – and every other pub around the Emerald Isle – is partying like it’s 1947, the last time and Irishman hoisted the fabled Claret Jug in victory.
Harrington’s emotional triumph over the treacherous links of Carnoustie Golf Club in a scintillating four-hole playoff against Sergio Garcia featured compelling, unadulterated drama that included every swing of emotion the human psyche can produce.
In the end, it was the 35-year-old from Dublin, one of the most likable lads in the game, who overcame a career of self-doubt to win his first major championship – in the one championship he craved since he was a little boy.
He did it by shooting a final-round 67 – one that incredibly included a double-bogey six on the final hole of regulation – to finish on 7-under for the tournament.
Harrington’s final stroke was a three-foot putt on 18 in the playoff to clinch his first major in 37 tries. It was a moment that will be burned into his memory forever.
“It’s going to take a long time for it to settle in,” Harrington said. “I didn’t know what it meant as that last putt was going in there. There were so many things going through my head. A huge amount of it was genuine shock that I won the Open Championship.”
The final, climactic holes provided compelling theater.
Garcia, who had led at the end of every round entering yesterday’s final round, stood at the 18th tee with a one-shot lead knowing par would win him his first major championship in 35 tries. He was aware that Harrington had doubled the 18th up ahead of him.
“I knew par was a winner,” Garcia said.
Garcia hit iron off the tee into the fairway and then left his 3-iron approach shot in the left bunker short of the green. From there, he failed to get up and down, sliding his potential winning eight-foot putt past the cup on the high side, forcing the second consecutive British Open playoff at Carnoustie.
“I still don’t know how that par putt missed; I’m still trying to ask myself, trying to find an answer on that,” a bewildered Garcia said afterward.
Minutes earlier, in perhaps the most surreal moment of the week, Garcia and Harrington passed each other crossing the bridge over the Barry Burn between 17 and 18. Harrington had just hit his tee shot on 18 into the burn and Garcia was playing up 17.
After taking a penalty drop, Harrington hit his next shot back into the burn where it crosses in front of the green and then he proceeded to make one of the greatest up-and-downs for a double-bogey six major championship golf has ever seen.
It was an up-and-down that kept Harrington alive for the playoff, trailing Garcia by only one shot and forcing the Spaniard to make par on the last to win.
As Garcia played 18, Harrington sat with his caddie, Ronan Flood, in the scorer’s hut watching it on TV.
“I just turned down the sound,” Harrington said. “Obviously, I didn’t want to hear any analyzing of my six. I just . . . watched it unfold.
“If Sergio parred the last and I did lose, I think I would have struggled to come back out and be a competitive golfer. It meant that much to me. It would have hit me very hard, and I think I would have struggled in the future.”
But Harrington kept faith, buoyed by the knowledge of just how difficult the 18th is at Carnoustie.
“It’s the toughest finishing hole in golf, no question about that,” he said. “There’s nowhere to hide.”
On the first hole of the playoff, No. 1, Harrington carded birdie to Garcia’s bogey for a two-shot lead he took to the fourth and final playoff hole, No. 18, where he closed out the tournament Garcia couldn’t close an hour earlier.
“Far more people believed I was going to win an Open Championship and had belief in me than I had in myself,” Harrington said. “I don’t know if I ever believed I was going to do it, but I tried – especially this week – to convince myself I was going to do it.”