Winner: Padraig Harrington
Around the wider world of golf: Lydia Ko won again at the ISPS Handa New Zealand Women´s Open on the LET; Amy Yang won the Honda LPGA Thailand on (what else?) the LPGA; Katie Kempter won the Volvik Championship on the Symetra Tour; and Andy Sullivan won the Joberg Open on the ET.
Okay, first things first...
ATTENTION STEVE WEBSTER! If you don't get to tee it up at the Africa Open this week as planned, by all means find some tournament you can play in! Because this week you are #297 in the world, just as James Hahn was two weeks ago and Paddy was this week, so you are next up to win. If everything plays to form, you will need -6 to make the playoff, which you will then win. BY ALL MEANS, DO NOT MISS THIS GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY!!!
Now wherein had been we? Oh sure, Paddy Harrington's mind-bending come-from-in the back of win on the Honda... And I DO mean mind-bending. Paddy says his biggest problem over the previous few years has been mental, which thoughts guru Bob Rotella has been helping him learn to manage. Even the announcers seemed to move deeper and deeper into shock with every twist and turn coming down the stretch. So rather than rehash the finale and playoff of the event, permit me pass on some thing many of you may no longer have seen.
A couple of hours after the playoff, Paddy chatted with ESPN's David Lloyd. (And it truly was a chatty interview, very comfortable among the two. A excellent alternate from the standard after-round interview.) Lloyd, as maximum of the broadcasters have carried out, made reference to the "brief memory" players want to have... Only to have Paddy interrupt him and disagree. Here's Paddy's model in my own words, for the reason that I failed to expect this so I didn't take "quote notes":
The waterball at 17 at some stage in ordinary play WAS very tons on Paddy's thoughts when they got lower back to the hollow throughout the playoff. However, Paddy has been following Daniel Berger's career for some time -- Berger made reference in his personal after-spherical presser to assembly Paddy again in 2011 -- and Paddy said he was properly aware of how lengthy and directly Berger turned into, so he did not need to face him on the 18th once more. His exceptional risk to win turned into at 17, so he "manned up" and hit the shot proper on the pin... And, because it turned out, Berger neglected the inexperienced.And that's how Padraig Harrington got his second win in three months (he won the Asian Tour's Indonesia Open in December), and his first PGA Tour win in around seven years.
Nobody noticed this coming besides maybe Paddy, who's an eternal optimist... And rightfully so. Now he is back in the Masters and the proud owner of his first-ever Limerick Summary:
The squibs and the shanks and the waterballs
Perplexed the announcers, whose final calls
Saw Paddy on pinnacle
After Berger?S ball dropped
In the drink! It was all a bit off-the-wall. The photo came from this page at PGATOUR.com.
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