Padraig Harrington kicks off the final leg of his DP World Tour Desert Swing in the UAE today as he tees off in the Ras Al Khaimah Championship at Al Hamra Golf Club.
The three-time major winner has shown glimpses of real brilliance in the early part of the season in the Middle East but he continues to battle a serious knee problem.
The Dubliner finished fourth in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, before carding an opening 81 in the Dubai Desert Classic. The 51-year-old hit back with a sparkling 65 but it wasn’t enough to avoid missing the cut. Despite that, the world No.239 remains seventh in the early season DP Tour money list having banked over €400,000.
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Ahead of the Ras Al Khaimah event on “the narrowest golf course” he’s ever seen this week, Harrington admitted his knee injury is restricting him on and off the course. It’s just a matter of when, regarding a knee replacement, but, in typical fashion, the Irishman is taking all the positives he can from the situation.
“OK, I’ve lost muscle tone in my legs and I could do with building up a little bit. But, it’s making me do less, which mightn’t be a bad thing,” Harrington said. “I’ll tell you what the biggest hindrance to it is, sometimes I’m not able to walk my dog. There you go, that’s when it really interferes with my life.
“Look, yeah I have to get a bit more physio. If one part of you is hurting, you forget about the other part.
“I can’t practice. It’s easier on the Champions Tour where I can use a cart. I can do 18 holes but I’m in pain, I have to ice it down. That’s just life.
“I have other niggles with getting older, you realise you can’t do what you could as a kid. But there’s still fight in me, I’ll figure it out, get it done somehow.
“Maybe I need to take a step back, maybe that’s why I have this problem. People get injured when they, in any sport, if you go to the football players coming out of the World Cup, they’ll get injured when they mentally need a break.
“Their mental side will tell their body and actually will end up getting an injury and it can be a physical injury caused by an accident, not just you pulling a hamstring or something.
“But mentally you will sabotage something in your body if your mind is saying I need a break. Maybe this is my way of saying, I can’t go as fast as I used to go, that work is hard, can’t do it.
“That’s very much part of me being happy on Tour, just slowing down a little bit and enjoying it.”
Speaking about some of the players who have accepted deals to go and play on the LIV Golf Tour, Harrington admitted he could see real benefits to the move.
“I actually think LIV can be, it’s so much easier mentally for a player. Like, it takes so much out of you being on the cut line every week, it wears down on you,” he said.
“Having no cut, knowing that you’re in a shorter field. Nearly guaranteeing that you’re going to be in contention, you find your confidence a lot quicker, you find your game a lot better being in a smaller field.
"In an ideal world you want to be a big fish in a small pond and certainly with me on the Champions Tour I’m playing a lot better because I’m a big fish in a small pond and that could be the huge boost for a number of those players gone there.
“If I was a player who was out of form and I wanted to, yeah, LIV is kind of ideal for that. The Champions Tour is ideal for that.”
Rory McIlroy claimed the top prize in the Desert Swing with a dramatic final hole victory over Patrick Reed last Monday in Dubai.
Sky Sports pundit and women’s golf legend Laura Davies said afterwards that, in this type of form, claiming two majors in 2023 would be around par for McIlroy - who hasn’t won one since 2014. Harrington believes that is very possible in the year ahead, particularly with the way he is putting.
“The chances of him winning two are actually close enough to the chances of him winning one,” said Harrington. “In some ways it’s a little bit, it could be getting the monkey off the back again. It could be that little bit of a push winning one. It certainly wouldn’t be strange for him to win two, no.
“Starting out, he wants to win the Masters, he’s going to be under pressure. But he’s sustained good putting now for two years, it doesn’t look like it’s going to go away and that’s huge.”
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