An extraordinary player. Three major championships in a span of 13 months. A career high ranking of world number 3. That’s Padraig Harrington for you. And just yesterday, the Irishman won the ISPS Handa Senior Open—becoming only the fifth player in history to win both The Open Championship and the Senior Open. He closed with a 3-under 67 to win his second senior major of the year. This makes his total victories in the Champions Tour to 11. He plays golf like he was born for it. But, is this something he actually wanted in his life?

Padraig Harrington began his career in 1995, but it wasn’t until 2007 that his real breakthrough came. The start of his ‘golden period.’ He won the 2007 Open Championship at Carnoustie—beating Sergio Garcia—and became the first Irishman in 60 years to lift the Claret Jug. He defended this title in 2008 at Royal Birkdale, becoming the first European since 1906—after James Braid—to do so. Then, just three weeks later, he won the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, breaking another drought as the first European winner in 78 years.

So when he says he didn’t think of himself to be a good enough professional golfer, it comes as a shock.

In a video posted on the official X page of the DP World Tour, Harrington shares his story. “I had no intention of being a professional golfer. I wasn’t a pretty golfer. I got it done…I wanted to be in the golf industry. I didn’t think I was good enough to be a golf pro.“

So, apparently, at 18 years of age, Harrington didn’t see himself making it on Tour. He thought he would stay in the golf world as a course manager. Poor Paddy didn’t even know player management was a job. He had himself enrolled in a night school, studying accountancy. But by his mid-twenties, something changed. He decided to give pro golf a shot.

“I decided I would have a go at turning pro because I could beat the other guys who were turning pro. If they thought they were good enough, I could beat them, so why not have a go?” he could be heard saying in the video.

Even then, his ambitions were modest. He would have been happy finishing 50th or 100th on the European Tour. At 23, he completed his night school and at 25, he made his Tour debut. 10 years later, he had won his first Major Championship.

And now, fast forward to the present day, his resume makes that original dream look almost laughable. A six-time Ryder Cup player and a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. At 53, he hasn’t lost his edge.

But was it all through rose-colored glasses? No at all.

The dark year of Padraig Harrington’s career

In 2009, fresh off his major-winning years, Padraig Harrington spiraled into what he called a ‘swing addiction.‘ He became obsessed with tweaking his mechanics, leading to a drop in results and missing cuts. It was his wife Caroline, caddie Ronan Flood, and sports psychologist Bob Rotella‘s ‘intervention’ which brought him on track. But that was only the beginning of a much longer struggle.

In 2012, the Irishman developed the putting yips, or “the heebie-jeebies,” as he called it. He suffered from severe putting problems— involuntary spasms or tremors—making it nearly impossible for him to hit the ball. He couldn’t score. As a result, his ranking plummeted from 59th in 2012 to 131st in 2013, and then all the way down to a career low 314th in 2014.

All this while, he had not won a single tournament on the PGA or European Tour. In 2014, he failed to qualify for the US Open for the first time in 15 years. The final nail in the coffin came when he fell outside the world’s top 300.

Although he made a comeback in 2015 by winning the Honda Classic, it was brief. His setbacks found a new way in— a mounting pile of injuries. He underwent multiple surgeries and could only play seven events in 2017. Then came perhaps the biggest blow on an international stage. As the European Ryder Cup captain in 2021, Harrington watched his team suffer its heaviest loss in history: a 19-9 defeat to the United States.

But he turned the page in his fifties. After his Senior Open win, Harrington has joined an ‘elite club’. Only four others had this done before him: Darren Clarke, Tom Watson, Gary Player, and Bob Charles. 

As he says, You don’t know what’s out there in the big world. And clearly for him, the story isn’t over.