Padraig Harrington is underrated in several ways. He may be the most under-the-radar three-time major champion of the modern era, owing to the fact that the latter two - the 2008 Open Championship and the 2008 PGA - came after Tiger Woods' post-'08 U.S. Open leg surgery kept him out of both fields. That is not Harrington's fault, and in any case he beat world-class fields, outplaying all chasers on the closing holes, when it mattered most. With three other PGA Tour wins and a dozen other European Tour wins, plus six Ryder Cup appearances (on four winning teams), he should be a Hall of Famer.
Now, Harrington is just three months from his 50th birthday, getting ready to captain the European team in the Ryder Cup this fall at Whistling Straits. You can bet he will be meticulously prepared, as has been his m.o. throughout his golf career, to give his team the best possible opportunity to beat the Yanks.
My preview of @PGAChampionship @PGATOUR @kiawahresort pic.twitter.com/athXEjc7OM
— Padraig Harrington (@padraig_h) May 19, 2021
Since late 2020, Harrington has been sharing brief pre- and post-tournament assessments of the course and his own play via his Twitter account. There's nothing fussy about them, but they often contain nuggets of insight either about how a course is playing, or how Harrington's own shortcomings were exposed by them. He is both honest about his struggles and earnest about his constant desire to fix them. His perpetual search for better golf makes him a model golfer in my book.
In his preview of Kiawah Island's Ocean Course, Harrington praises the scale of the course because of how it enables the setup staff a bit more freedom with how holes can play, concluding that "It's a golf course for everybody." Including, no doubt, a certain three-time major champ.
