Padraig Taking Career Inspiration From Howard Hughes **

Absolutely do not miss Karl MacGinty's setup and interview with Padraig Harrington about making swing changes after winning two straight majors.

Q: Are great sportsmen different to the rest of us? Can we only try and imagine what they, or you, do?

PH: It's complicated to explain what's going on. I'm trying to understand the whole process (of playing golf) so that I can control it. I wouldn't be able to accept performing without knowing why. I don't think I'd enjoy winning if I didn't know why I was winning. I think the ultimate satisfaction of winning is understanding how I got there. While I admire sporting achievement, I pay very little respect to somebody who wins without knowing why.

Q: Like the guy who smashes the balls up in pool and some go in?

PH: No. No. Actually it's the opposite. It would be the guy who gets in on the pool table; has the perfect cueing action and clears everything up but has no understanding of what he's doing.

Q: Who, for example?

PH: I'm not going to give you examples but I am all the time trying to figure out, do people understand what they're doing?

Q: Like Maradona?

PH: Yeah. I've very little time for wasted talent and very little time for the talent that has no understanding of why they do what they do. If somebody's best in the world at something and they can't explain in detail why they were there, I wouldn't be interested.

And here I thought most great athletes were successful because they didn't have a clue what made them so good!

Q: Can that be damaging?

PH: Howard Hughes. As a 14-year-old kid, he got his dad to buy him a sports car so he could pull it apart. He spent a month breaking it down bit-by-bit and then putting it all back together. Well, that's me with my golf game.

Howard also spent the last few years of his life locked up in the Desert Inn wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes.

Damaging? Oh you be the judge.

Update on Friday, July 10, 2009 at 08:52 PM by Geoff

**Lawrence Donegan talks to Padraig's teacher Bob Torrance about what the defending Open Champion is trying to do with his swing. Meanwhile, the tabloids are enjoying this one:

Comments

[dbh]

Whoa nellie!
That's crazy talk.
Paddy remains on my 'don't pick' pool list for the foreseeable future.

[Morg]

The best players create nonconscious techniques through repetition, and they let their game execution become habitual, with a conscious mind only towards course management. So deconstructing a successful swing in order to understand it better, and then reconstituting it into something else -- that's a very dangerous exercise. Still, I hope it works out for Padraig.

[keith86]

WTF?so Paddy would play golf if no prize money was involved,or would he be the best barman or plumber in the world. You lift the seat look in the toilet see shit and paper get the plunger and poke it up and down.Detailed enough Paddy?

[Ky Laffoon's Ghost]

"I'm trying to understand the whole process (of playing golf) so that I can control it."

Whoa! Talk about your point-missers. Cue theme from "The Twilight Zone."

[Jordan]

Players who won majors and then disappeared:

Baker-Finch . . . Lehman . . . Duval . . . Paddy?

[sodface]

People tinker with their swings--that's golf! It's as common for the major champion as it is for the 15 handicapper. Tiger went down this road just a couple of years ago and Vijay had his one dominant year, but he came out fine on the other end, and you all remember how incredulous people were at the time that he would change a thing.

[vwgolfer]

Dude you just won 3 majors, just hit the damn ball.

[MacDuff]

Just got back from golf course...hit a bucket of balls first to try and "groove" my swing, third shot onwards had a serious case of the righties...almost asked for raincheck...nah, i'll play anyway...good hack, played to handicap...happy man. Now what seems to be the problem Padraig?

[Sir ShanksALot]

Paddy's doing what every golfer does. He's just using his own over-analytical words to explain it.

He's trying to understand what he does, so he can do it again. In other words, he wants to "own his swing." As Tiger has said, that's where the satisfaction comes from.

Paddy could win a 3rd Claret Jug, but if he isn't in command of his swing, he would find no satisfaction out of it.

[Amana]

Wow, that's scary, I'm afraid that boy is t-o-a-s-t.

[Shiksa]

Oh Padraig--just throw strikes!!!

[Pickworth]

"Just sneak up on the ball and hit it with your practice swing."
Roberto Di Vicenzo.

Amen.

[Hawkeye]

He shold have asked Paddy if he thought that Seve knew what he was doing. No, Harrington fails to understand that there is more than one way of being a human being - you're can be analytical, like Harrington himself, or you can be instinctive, like Ballesteros. Some rare specimen, like Woods and Nicklaus, can be both. But to say that you don't respect people who perform amazingly creative art by relying on instinct, that's pure arrogance.

[CBell]

This dust-up is going to ratchet up Paddy's motivation and emotion. He'll either super-grind his way to another fine tournament or he'll implode with uncertainty. I doubt he'll finish in the middle.

[Tighthead]

Great quote Pickworth.

I have a tourney today and that is just what I needed.

[Tighthead]

Pickworth, I take it back.

I gagged in the competition so the quote is obviously worthless.