Padraig Harrington has won three times in 14 events on the PGA Champions Tour this season.
Getty Images
As Padraig Harrington nears the end of his third season on the PGA Champions Tour – preparing for next week’s Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club from November 7-10 – he seems to recognize the stark contrasts between the tour’s seniors and the PGA Tour.
At 53, Harrington is still spray enough to bomb it off the tee – a huge advantage over his older tour counterparts – but not quite able to keep up with the new guns on the PGA Tour week after week.
This ‘unusual’ swing change fueled Padraig Harrington’s recent victory
Josh Berhow
That doesn’t mean he can’t compete on the PGA Tour again, as the three-time major champion proved he can do so with an impressive T22 finish at this year’s Open Championship at Royal Troon. However, in seven starts on the PGA Tour in 2024, he missed the cut five times.
But Harrington has been nothing short of dominant when it comes to his performances at PGA Tour Champions events.
IN 14 starts in 2024 on the Senior Tour, Harrington hasn’t lost a single round, won three tournaments, finished T10 seven times and earned over $1.6 million. They are not quite Similar numbers to Scottie Schefflerbut still they are all impressive.
Given his success on the PGA Champions Tour, Harrington joked about getting a false sense of confidence when the game is so sharp against the older guys, leading him to think he could translate that against the younger guys in PGA Tour.
“When I’m here on the Champions Tour, and you play well, you think ‘that’s great,'” Harrington said on a Zoom call ahead of next week’s senior tournament event. “But the better you play in the Champions League, the more you think you can beat the young guys. So it’s kind of a Catch 22 in the sense that if you start winning in the Champions League, you think, ‘Oh, maybe I can do it in the regular tournament’.”
Padraig Harrington: This sneaky placement hack tells you where to aim
Nick Dimengo
While Harrington has competed on both the Senior Tour and the PGA Tour in recent years, he hasn’t won a PGA Tour event since the 2015 Honda Classic, with his last T10 coming at the 2023 Valero Texas Open — so he understands how hard it is to translate sharp play from one tournament to the next.
He admitted he felt a little overwhelmed during this year’s Scottish Open, when he missed the cut after finishing at 1-over.
“At the Scottish Open this year (on the regular tour), I definitely tended to play more on the Champions Tour. I felt a little out of my depth,” he said.
Despite the differences between the competition in the two tournaments, Harrington has said this before the senior tour is “the hardest ride to hold your card”, so he certainly won’t let any success go to his head.
“It’s really cut and dry,” Harrington said earlier. “Thirty-six to hold your card is very, very tight. It doesn’t take long for you to drop those 36. So that’s why you see guys here practicing. And if you’re not one of the guys practicing, someone else will do it for you. And that means you will slip out of your position.
“The boys practice the same as they practiced in the tournament. They actually probably even work a little harder here.”
“>
