IT MIGHT sound more than a little like a fisherman’s tale, but Padraig Harrington, although properly blessed with the blarney of a self-respecting Irishman, has the technology to prove his case this time.
Harrington knew that the putt he sank for the eagle three that won him the Barclays Classic in Harrison, New York, on the US tour on Sunday was a long one and he even had the rare pleasure of being able to watch it seek the blessed darkness of the hole. What he did not know at the time was that the “Shot Link” system, a gizmo used by the tour to rate the length of a golfer’s putts and, for all anyone knows, his inside leg measurement, too, calculated that the winning shot was struck from precisely 65ft 7in.
To read some of the more excitable elements of the American press yesterday, anyone would think that Harrington’s stroke was a global lifechanging event. The truth is that it was just — as if a 65ft 7in putt should ever have the word “just” associated with it — a particularly worthy entrant into the honours board of Long Putts That Have Won Tournaments.
It was to bring Harrington his second US tour title of the year and followed his second place in the same event last season. Not that the Dublin Demon is any stranger to being a runner-up: he has been one 24 times in his career.
He probably thought that it was to be No 25 when he trailed Jim Furyk by three strokes with five holes to play. Poor old Furyk — he has quite enough to endure, what with a swing that looks about as solid as a pound and a half of best tripe, without a cheeky Irishman taking the mickey from a greater distance than some people go on holiday.
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Harrington’s hammer blow, which he confessed was an attempted lay-up that went gloriously wrong, elevated him three places in the world rankings to No 8 and left him sitting pretty at ninth in the US tour order of merit. It also won him $1 million (about £547,000), give or take a few double-sided Killarney sixpences.
It was not the longest putt that has won a title. That accolade might go to Vicente Fernandez, who holed one up all three tiers of the 18th green at The Belfry to win the Murphy’s English Open in 1992.
It would also be beaten, at first remove and from an even greater distance, by the tramliner that Bernhard Langer coaxed into the hole to put him into a play-off against Barry Lane in the Smurfit European Open at the K Club in 1995. Langer actually won on the first hole of a play-off, but had it not been for the wriggling 75ft monster, he would never have had the chance.
But no matter. Harrington’s coup de grâce. It was still a heck of a putt and it brought about another triumph in a weekend of extraordinary golfing feats that saw the quaintly named Birdie Kim, of South Korea, win the US Women’s Open by holing a 30-yard bunker shot for the only birdie of the day at the 18th hole at Cherry Hills, Colorado. Kim beat Annika Sorenstam by nine strokes. Now, that really is remarkable.