Wacky Honda Classic: Padraig Harrington Is Back!

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Watching Padraig Harrington at Riviera or even on the range at the Honda it was hard to imagine there was a method to his madness, but in one of the better redemption stories of modern times, the three-time major champ returned to the winner’s circle.

From Doug Ferguson's AP game story, a reminder how far back Harrington came from:

Lost in all the collapses down the stretch was that the 43-year-old veteran was five shots behind with eight holes to play when he hooked his tee shot and dropped his head walking off the 11th hole. It was enough left of the fairway to find a patch of muddied grass that had been trampled by the gallery, and he played a bold shot to a right flag over the water to 15 feet for birdie. That's where Poulter went into the water, and the three-shot swing meant Harrington was back in the game.

He followed with a 35-foot birdie on the 12th, a 7-foot birdie on the 13th and a 15-foot putt on the 14th for his fourth straight birdie and a share of the lead when Reed holed from 18 feet right before him.

Brian Wacker on how far Harrington has come and how wonderfully honest he was about the low point:

Whatever physical tinkering he had done with his swing, not seeing the results he’d hoped for had crept into the mental side of his game and in 2012 he suffered the yips.

“As a lot of people who win major tournaments, you look back at them and you try and live up to them, play up to them,” Harrington said. “I just got very intolerant of my mental game, my focus.

“When you get (the yips), it's really frustrating, it's really hard. You don't know what to do. You grind your way through it and it is a tough thing to get through.

“But yeah, there's no doubt low points in those years, because you know, in 2008, 2009, I'm very much in the penthouse. I wasn't quite down to the doghouse but not far away from it.”

On Saturday, Dave Shedloski recounted how big Harrington's win in Asia was late last year:

It hasn't helped that he has tinkered with his swing endlessly in the last seven years. Sound familiar?

"My big problem is really trying to control the outcome and not settling for the process being enough," he said. "Ultimately, I have found out that is the biggest hindrance to my game. My mind out there was better than it's ever been. It was ugly at the end there. I found it for a while, though."

Offering him solace is that he found it in Indonesia, too. After blowing a four-stroke lead through 54-holes, Harrington sank a 15-foot par putt on the 72nd hole to beat Thanyakon Khrongpha of Thailand by two shots. It was his first win since the 2010 Johor Open, also on the Asian Tour.

He found the spark at Riviera last Saturday afternoon when a lot of players had called it a day. His post round explanation to PGA Tour Radio:


Meanwhile, it wasn't all Harrington. Daniel Berger nearly pulled off an historic comeback and Will Gray recounts Ian Poulter’s stunning collapse that leaves the Englishman (still) without a PGA Tour stroke play win.

The highlights, which don’t quite do justice to what an entertaining finish it was (and nice to have the livelier NBC team back delivering all of the little touches like showing actual golf swings and including cool sounds).

The clinching shot in the playoff by Harrington: