Pádraig Harrington believes Irish golf is still punching well above its weight in terms of performance but is currently falling short in terms of numbers on tour which he hopes is just a cyclical thing.
When Michael Campbell lifted the US Open title in 2005, his regular practice partner Harrington thought “I’m as good as him” before he went on to win three majors in two seasons.
Eleven major championships have been won by golfers from this island since 2007 and while more may follow from Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Tom McKibbin is the only player under the age of 30 with a DP World Tour card. Harrington acknowledges that there are plenty of superstar role models for our budding pros to aspire to be but believes peer success could drive a crop of players through to the DP World Tour.
Max Kennedy, Conor Purcell, Gary Hurley, Liam Nolan, Mark Power and James Sugrue are all looking to gain promotion to the DP World Tour from the HotelPlanner Tour and Harrington hopes that if one does well it can spur the others to follow like he did with Campbell.
“It’s incredible,” said Harrington when asked about Ireland’s talent drain on the DP World Tour. “There are plenty of Irish people on tour. Loads of caddies. Physios. But it is a very common question,” added the Dubliner who stressed the importance of feeling like you belong. He turned pro in 1995 through Q-School and won on his ninth DP World Tour start.
“I will say the most important thing is that if the current crop sees one of their peers being successful, then they’ll go, ‘I’m as good as him.’
“If they were trying to be Major winners, maybe myself and the other guys who won the Majors are role models. But at the moment, we’re trying to get guys out on tour, and there aren’t very many role models for them.
“As Major winners, maybe we are too far detached from those lads, and they need to see their friends, their peers, actually getting out there and doing it, and that will bring the others along.”
Harrington recently made his 500th DP World Tour appearance at the Bahrain Championship. He was the only Irishman in the field. It’s a stark contrast from when he first appeared on tour and there could be 10-15 Irish players competing, but now a squeeze on places has been put on by Scandinavian countries, France, Spain and even Scotland.
The three-time major winner has noticed the change in landscape and doesn’t feel it’s down to a lack of quality but hopes it’s just a cyclical thing rather than anything fundamental.
“We played the event in Bahrain, and there’s this area that has maybe 15 different restaurants, it’s like a food court, but a little higher end, and it was like the European Tour Players’ Lounge at night,” he explained.
“I’d be sitting there with Ronan, and a couple of caddies, and you look over, and there’s 10 French guys at this table, and 12 Spanish guys at that table, and eight Scottish guys, all in their little groups. And you’re going, that used to be us, you know.
“There used to be 15 guys when I came on tour. So why? Could it be just cyclical? It could be just that’s the way it is. It could be the fact that there are so many more Scandinavians and even Eastern Europeans squeezing guys out of places. “If you’ve got 12 French, there were only two French guys on back when I started. So that’s 10 more spots gone.
“But then you look at the Scots, and you say, well, they’ve got 10 guys on the tour at the moment, but go back four or five years, maybe 10 years ago, and they were tearing their hair out about how poorly they were doing relative to Ireland.
“So there are definitely cycles in this. There definitely are.”
Leave a comment