Ryder Cup: Padraig Harrington admits to trepidation as European captain
The Ryder Cup in Paris feels like it just ended, but preparations are already underway for 2020. Padraig Harrington is the next captain for Team Europe, a title which he admits is both a tremendous honor, as well as a significant challenge.
Being Ryder Cup captain is not easy. And if you’ve won three majors and 30 tournaments worldwide, it puts your reputation on the line to take up the challenge. Padraig Harrington knows that all too well, yet, he feels at his stage in life and in his career, he will take the chance.
“I’m thrilled to be named as The Ryder Cup captain for 2020. It’s not something I went into lightly,” he said at the European Tour press conference. “You know, I’m the right man for the job at this time.”
Harrington, though he has a charming way about him and is wonderfully pleasant with fans, is taking the task seriously.
“I suppose you could look at this as being a natural progression. You move on from player to vice-captain to captain, but it’s not something that I take on without a certain amount of trepidation,” he admitted. “I really want to be a help. I want to hopefully lead The Ryder Cup and The European Tour in a better place after two years.”
As the European Tour faces continuing challenges from the PGA Tour in terms of player defections, a victory in Ryder Cup matters more in 2020 than it has for the last five or six matches. Recently the European Tour scaled back the requirements for keeping a card to just four events.
Players as important to the cause as Rory McIlroy would not commit to even that number when it was first announced. However, Harrington indicated on New Year’s day that he is confident McIlroy will be on the team.
“I can only look at his actions. That man loves the Ryder Cup. He’s become a leader in the team room,” Harrington told Sky Sports.
A day after Harrington said that, McIlroy confirmed at the Sentry Open that he would, in fact, play the required events.
While heading up the Ryder Cup team for an away match is always difficult, Harrington was a good choice by the European PGA and European Tour because he has played and had success in the U.S. One of his three majors came at the PGA Championship. He won six times on the PGA Tour, to date, while taking 15 titles on the European Tour. His other two majors were at The Open Championship where he won back-to-back in 2007-2008. He has won 30 professional titles in all.
“I think it does fit nicely that I have performed and played in the US,” he said. “I would be reasonably well-known in the US. The event itself is not too far from Chicago, which has a nice Irish base.”
He’s not kidding about that. Chicago still has a St. Patrick’s Day parade second to none. They dye the Chicago River green for the occasion.
The challenge, of course, will be to add something to the legacy of Ryder Cup that is his alone. Harrington said he has taken something from each captain he played for and that they have all been different, each one providing a different kind of skill set.
“You know, I could go back as far as your Sam Torrance and Woosie, who are very emotional, put their arm around your shoulder and make you believe that they believed in you. They give you tremendous confidence,” he explained.
He likened his personality to be more like Bernhard Langer. Langer, he said, was more like a schoolteacher and would tell players what clubs to hit off tees.
“But then you learn from Monty, who gathered the best of everything that had gone on before and put it together,” Harrington added. “Paul McGinley took it to a new level, no doubt about that, in pre-match organization. Paul certainly put more into that two years before the match than anybody else had done before, and that’s a requirement now.”
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Harrington’s goal is to be able to find an edge to help the team perform at their best and win more matches than the U.S. team. Of course, he only needs a tie to retain the cup, but you know he wants an outright victory.
“It’s a different level, and it’s something I have to, I’m really conscious that I have to find that edge and add to it,” Harrington added. “That’s something that I don’t like lightly.”
Harrington expects to have three rookies on the team and the rest will be filled with veterans like Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood. Sergio Garcia may be on the team, or he may be a vice-captain, just depending on how he plays in 2020.
“There is an element of The Ryder Cup, there’s quite a number of things to be done outside of my golf, and I don’t mind,” Harrington added about the captain’s role. “I don’t mind going for a dinner for a couple of hours and sitting down and having a nice meal with sponsors or actually business meetings or things like that. That’s kind of where I’ve got to in my career.”
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Harrington took up a PGA Tour card in 2005. He has played between 15 and 21 events every year since then through 2016 before having a freak elbow injury in 2017. He recovered to play a full schedule in 2018. He has been a member of the European Tour since 1996.