Padraig Harrington’s pre-tournament press conference at the Amgen Irish Open at Royal County Down was everything you’d expect it to be from one of the game’s great thinkers and great talkers.
He covered a wide range of topics from his first impressions of up-and-coming 18-year-old Sean Keeling, with whom he played a practice round, to the ongoing LIV and PGA Tour negotiations and potential solutions, and to the doubts over Jon Rahm’s Ryder Cup eligibility, but even Harrington found himself slightly squirming in his seat when the issue of Graeme McDowell’s recent ban for using a prohibited nasal spray arose.
“I’m getting them all asked here, aren’t I?” he joked. “I’m not used to these press conferences anymore. The Champions Tour is a lot nicer.”
McDowell held his hands up and took full responsibility for the error, but then took a back-handed swipe at the PGA Tour in the middle of his statement, saying: “Unlike some other tours LIV enforces these rules rigorously, which made this situation particularly challenging for me. However, I accept the rules and penalties – they are essential for maintaining the integrity of the sport.”
While Harrington was somewhat sympathetic to G-Mac’s plight, he feels that rules are rules and that professional golfers have to be extremely careful about what medications they take.
“I’m a real stickler for the rules,” he said, before going on to add: “Graeme’s a friend of mine, and you know, the nasal spray, you always have to be careful with things like that. It’s just one of those things. You can’t take anything that’s over-the-counter at all.
“So maybe he got thrown out there. Obviously they don’t do that on other tours. They don’t… especially an innocuous thing like that, you don’t get thrown out there.
“Also when something happens like that, you take it on the chin and you don’t throw everybody else under the bus.”
Public suspensions, particularly on the PGA Tour, rarely occur and when certain players have taken leaves of absence, the rumour mill winds up and whispers begin to circulate as to what alternative reasons they may have for stepping away from the game. And it’s often a case of ‘no smoke without fire’.
Harrington would prefer it if all testing results were made public.
“Yeah, look, I think I would prefer if all the tours fully disclosed who was tested and the results, both good and bad,” he said. “Because the more transparency we have, the better. It clears up a lot of things.
“Yeah, and I’m a stickler for the rules. We don’t have testing on the Champions Tour, but I’m an absolute stickler that we’ve got to stick to the rules all the time. I would prefer if everything was more transparent in the sense of — even in terms of how many times they are tested and how they
go about it.
“Why keep it [quiet]? It doesn’t need to be — maybe they say some law of privacy, but I pretty much know every time I go back and play a PGA TOUR event, I’m getting tested on Tuesday or
Wednesday. My random name has come churning back up to the top.
“So look, yeah, a bit more transparency would not be a harm but I also think that maybe wasn’t the right moment in time to bring it up. When something goes wrong, you just have to take responsibility for it and not sort of drag everybody else [down].”
Harrington himself tries to limit medication unless it’s absolutely necessary, but takes precautionary measures on the rare occasions that he has to and seeks confirmation that what he is about to take is within the boundaries of what’s acceptable.
“I really stick away from it,” he admits. “If I have to take something that’s — anything at
all, and I’m trying to think what that would be — I would ring up the PGA TOUR and say, ‘well, what’s the story with this? Is this okay?’
“You end up being the opposite. Like you don’t take anything at any stage, really. You avoid all of it. The only thing I’m taking is the EyePromise stuff at the moment. So that would be the end of it for me.”
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