Pádraig Harrington has admitted that Rory McIlroy’s exploits at the 2011 US Open at Congressional was both an eye-opener and a confidence-killer as he was faced with the prospect that there was a player capable of doing things on the golf course that he, himself, couldn’t match.
Appearing on The Cookie Jar Golf Podcast, the three-time major winner covered a wide range of topics, including why he thinks that being a big fish in a small pond can be vital for building confidence and teaching players to become winners rather than serial also-rans.
Among the more interesting aspects of the hour-long conversation, Harrington revealed the psyche that led him to not only believe that he could win a major championship – that was firmly bedded in after coming close in the US Open at Winged Foot in 2006 – but that he would win one.
“Going into the majors I won in 2007 and 2008, I believed I was the best golfer and I could get my very best golf,” he explained. “And my whole goal was, prepare right, get myself in position, I’ll play well in three of the four majors, I’ll be in contention two of the four, and over two years, if I’m in contention four times, I’ll surely get one. And, as it turned out, I got three.”
Harrington goes on to explain that he continued the process in the years that followed, and though the results didn’t quite stack up to those during ’07 and ’08, he had chances and played well and still believed that he was the best player in the world.
Until four days in June, 2011, when a 22-year-old who’d shared the green with him at Carnoustie in 2007 when Harrington received the Claret Jug and McIlroy the silver medal, turned the game on its head and delivered a major-winning performance that had the biggest winning margin since Tiger’s 15-stroke win at Pebble Beach in 2000.
“Where I was broken, and it’s only in hindsight I see it, Rory broke me in 2011,” he explained. “What happened – and this happens to everyone – he broke everyone, but I was the best player, that’s what I believed. I’d gone into Congressional – I played a practice round with Adam Scott on Wednesday and he came in to do an interview and told everybody to go home.
“He said, ‘You might as well all go home because Pádraig Harrington is winning this’. Ok, I am, in my head, the best player. I’ve won three majors, like, just recently, I’m in great form, I’ve prepared right and I go into this tournament and Rory does something that I can’t compete with. He just wipes the floor with everyone, like, we’re all the same, he’s just blowing us away.
“But that’s ok if I thought I could get better. When Tiger was doing that in the early 2000s, I was only on my way up. This is me at my best and I don’t think I can compete with him. So there’s a big difference there and it’s happened to everybody. In 2008, I was not looking over my shoulder, I was only concerned about me. 2011 onwards, I’m now thinking I’m not good enough, I need to be a better version of me in order to compete with Rory. Now, you don’t realise it at the time, but I guarantee you that happened to Rory after 2014 when he was trying to compete with Jordan and DJ.”
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