Golf: When Tiger Woods, as the defending champion, slipped the tartan jacket on to the shoulders of Padraig Harrington after his play-off victory in the Dunlop Phoenix tournament in Miyazaki, Japan, yesterday, the Dubliner quipped that he looked forward to the world number one performing a similar act with a different coloured jacket at some stage in the future, a reference to the Masters green jacket at Augusta.
Harrington's second victory of the season, his first in Japan and the 17th individual win worldwide of his professional career, provided yet further evidence that his game has evolved to the stage where he is a serious contender for a major. Very few players have taken on Woods head-to-head and emerged victorious, which is what Harrington did in birdieing the second play-off hole to claim victory after the pair had finished level on 271, nine-under.
"The fact that I've beaten Tiger in a play-off makes me no different a golfer than when I came here. It may change what people think of me, but, in my own eyes, I'm the same golfer," remarked Harrington, who last month won the European Tour Order of Merit. The victory - worth 40 million yen (€265,000) to the Irishman - should also move him back into the world's top 10 when the official rankings are released today.
The significance, however, of Harrington's win over Woods is that such head-to-head successes with the game's most dominant player are so rare. It was only the second time in 16 play-offs Woods had lost, the last time being in the 1998 Nissan Open in Los Angeles when Bill Mayfair beat him. The only other time Woods lost out in a play-off was against Nick Price in the Nedbank Challenge, an unofficial tournament, in Sun City in 1998.
It was a tough defeat for Woods, who led by three shots with six holes of regulation play remaining, only for Harrington to draw level. A two-shot swing occurred on the 16th where Harrington birdied, despite putting his drive into heavy rough, and Woods bogeyed, missing a three-foot putt.
Both Harrington and Woods finished with 67s, leaving them a shot clear of Japan's Keiichiro Fukabori.
In the play-off, Harrington's refusal to submit to Woods was evident. The two protagonists both birdied the par five 18th hole in the first hole of sudden death and, when Harrington's drive was pulled left behind a y-shaped pine tree, he went for the risky play of attempting to thread the approach shot between the two trunks. The shot actually hit the tree, but advanced 120 yards to an area trampled down by spectators and, from there, Harrington played a superb third shot to within two feet of the pin.
"I definitely got lucky, but sometimes fortune favours the brave," opined Harrington of following up his fortuitous break with such a precisely played final approach. Of the risky second shot through the tree trunks, he added: "When you come up against Tiger, you've got to take whatever opportunities are presented. I saw it as a great chance of hitting a spectacular shot to win the play-off and it came off."
Woods had already played his third shot to 12 feet, but missed the birdie chance, which left Harrington with the short birdie putt to claim the win and join a list of winners of the tournament that includes Woods, David Duval, Lee Westwood and Thomas Bjorn.
On the 41 previous occasions that Woods had carried a lead or share of the lead into the final round of a tournament, he had won 38 times.
Of his failure to see this one through, Woods remarked: "I was struggling all day with my swing. It just wasn't my tee shots, it was everything."
However, even when trailing by three shots coming down the stretch, Harrington had fancied his chances. "Tiger had gone into that, 'I'm three ahead, play steady golf' mode. I knew I had an opportunity if I could make some birdies," said Harrington, who birdied the 16th and 18th to force the play-off and then birdied the 18th twice in the play-off to claim the title.
