We have probably already seen the most beautiful golf tournament of the year: it is the Honda Classic, closed on Monday with the sensational victory of Padraig Harrington, a 43-year-old player from Dublin, number 297 in the world, a man who had a second chance. The course was painful, difficult, exhausting, a struggle for survival that lasted 7 years and five days, those of the match (one day more due to the postponement due to bad weather) which ended on the 74th hole, in the playoffs, in a direct challenge between old champion, Harrington and XNUMX-year-old North American rookie Daniel Berger.
In this confrontation, on the PGA National (Champion), Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the protagonists are successful underdogs, thanks to which golf sometimes manifests itself in all its cruelty and beauty. For this reason it is worth dedicating a few lines to the event and to Harrington's career, winner of three majors: the 2007 and 2008 Open Championship (before, among other things, another "big loser" like Sergio Garcia , number 7 in the world) and the Pga Championship also in 2008. The Irishman's rich Palmares also includes the 2005 Honda Classic, yet for seven years Padraig has not recorded any successes, only defeats. Why? It's one of the mysteries of golf, perhaps at the origin there are some wrong choices.
In fact, at the top of his form, the champion decides to change his swing, to improve further, instead within a few years he collapses from position number 3 in the world order of merit, to the 300 and beyond. He loses his US circuit card and hesitates on the European tour, making a series of missed cuts, including the Italian Open last year. After 40 years Harrington seems destined to end up in oblivion. Yet this "killer bunny" (shows his teeth and eyes wide when in a competitive trance) does not give up. To get back on track he wins a minor tournament and returns to the top 300 players in the world, then arrives in Florida, with the World Ranking number "297", a lucky position, the same as James Hahn two weeks ago when he won the Northern Trust open.
Harrington's is not a triumphal march, but a tiring climb, one step at a time, up to the 17th of the last round (the 71st hole), played on Monday. With ten minutes to go, he has victory in hand. His direct opponents, the Englishman Ian Poulter and the American Patrick Reed, "committed suicide" in the previous holes, ending up in the water in the key moments of the race. Harrington is at -7, while the young Berger has come up from the back, and has already finished at -6. For Padraig, winning means returning to the greats, enjoying many exemptions, putting the PGA Tour card back in his pocket and guaranteeing himself an invitation to the Masters. Between him and this objective there are the par 3 of the 17 and the par 5 of the 18. He just has to play as prudently as possible, make two pars and win without problems.
But golf is cruel especially if the goal is close, it is in that moment that the players' legs and thoughts tremble. Padraig is visibly nervous: everything bothers him, the moving audience, the flying planes, the buzzing flies, he stops several times, argues with his caddy, looks and looks at the arc his ball must make to pass the water and land on the green. Eventually he decides on a tricky, left-to-right 5-iron shot, but his body and hands don't move as expected. The ball immediately takes a too right-handed trajectory and sinks with its load of dreams. It is the premise for a tragic double bogey that arrives on time. At the 18th tee Harrington is in second position, he no longer has time to recover and his plans for redemption fade away, while the ghosts of recent years return to their place.
After 5 days of play, after such a gross mistake, the desire to throw in the towel almost always takes over. Harrington however is a champion, he is a player who hasn't won for seven years, but who has withstood the tension of three majors, therefore…..The drive of the 18 is on the track, but too far away and too water risky to reach the green with two shots. Ours then pulls a second approach and the third towards the flag. The operation succeeds, but the ball lands far from the shaft. Harrington, to force the young opponent into the playoff, has a long putt for the birdie and to go down to -6. At that moment something symmetrical and contrary to the 17 snaps into his mind, a survival instinct that brings the ball into the hole. It's an explosion of joy and the bunny starts believing it again.
It always starts from 18 with the formula "sudden death", sudden death, whoever succumbs to even one blow, loses the comparison. However, the hole ends in stalemate, two pars, although Daniel is closer and has, for an instant, the tournament in hand. We then head to the 17th tee, where it all began. Padraig decides to persevere in the same difficult shot of a few minutes before, a 5 iron, cut from left to right. He is nervous again, he stops several times, consults the caddy, takes up a position and then takes off, takes up his position and takes off. At the end of this ballet he takes the iron and shoots: this time it's a splendid iron that ends one meter from the flag. Young Daniel tries to fight back, but goes into the water. The match ends with a par from Harrington and his resurrection. As in Gianni Morandi's song: “if they tell you you're finished don't believe it”, one in a thousand makes it and Padraig made it, because golf sometimes offers a second chance.
