Pádraig Harrington reckons he would have been the perfect stunt double on the new Happy Gilmore movie and admits that playing hurling helped him perfect the iconic swing.
Harrington has never been afraid to experiment with his golf swing and has been seen trialling the Happy Gilmore move in practice and he briefly contemplated taking the wacky swing into tournament play.
The Dubliner, who makes his first Champions Tour appearance on US soil at the Cologuard Classic today says his background in hurling has made the famous Gilmore action second nature to him.
“Look, it’s second nature to me, I grew up playing hurling so I’ve never had a second thought about doing a Happy Gilmore, running up, hitting it. I did consider using it in tournament play. I tried to tidy it up a bit,” said the 53-year-old who chases his tenth senior win.
“So if you look at my old Happy Gilmores, they are full out 130-mile an hour golf swings. I did try and tidy it up to see if I could maybe use it on the golf course. I could swing faster, but just didn’t quite get the strike of a normal shot so it wasn’t really worth it. I haven’t done one for ages and I do it straight away.”
Harrington’s father played Gaelic football for Cork while he was also a keen hurler and that’s where the three-time major winner picked up the game as a child and the same movement has helped him perfect the Happy Gilmore swing.
Harrington feels every child should try to emulate Gilmore, but maybe leave out the temper.
“As I said, there’s a great Irish sport, probably the best sport in the world called hurling and it’s second nature for us to swing at a ball with a stick, usually with somebody else trying to hit you at the same time. I don’t know if it just builds up a natural confidence with it.
“And every kid should do it, every kid should be doing Happy Gilmores because it perfects the right movement in the golf swing, it perfects the right pivot. Everything about it is good for your golf swing. So everybody should try it and do it and their golf swing should be a tidied up version of that.”
Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Keegan Bradley, Rickie Fowler, Tony Finau, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Will Zalatoris, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka all make appearances in the movie sequel, Happy Gilmore 2, which hits Netflix on Friday, July 25.
Harrington laughed that he was a little disappointed he wasn’t given the opportunity to showcase his skills on the new movie. Perhaps the producers were afraid he would be a better Happy Gilmore than Adam Sandler.
“I’ll watch it, yeah, yeah. Watch it more for the cameos I think more than anything else. Yeah, it should be a bit of fun. Disappointed they didn’t ask the best person in the world doing a Happy Gilmore to be in it, but there you go. Maybe I would have shown ’em up.”
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