Padraig Harrington Springs Back to Life at Firestone Country Club

Padraig Harrington, you’ve just won three majors in two years including back-to-back wins at the British Open and PGA Championship to close out the 2008 season; so, what are you going to do next?

Well, Harrington certainly didn’t head off to Disney World.

He instead decided to celebrate his astounding success by completely revamping his golf swing.

Now, if you’ve ever walked up and down a PGA Tour driving range, you’ll know that it looks like an infomercial promoting every swing gadget and contraption imaginable.

You’ll see guys with so-called swing-improving contraptions on their wrists, legs, feet, elbows, knees, shoulders and even over their eyes.

At times, it can be difficult to believe that these gown men with odd-looking contraptions hanging off every part of their body are actually the best golfers on the face of the planet.

So, it’s no surprise that Harrington, like virtually every other player on tour, is constantly tweaking his swing.

But, what is somewhat surprising is how dramatic of a swing change Harrington decided to make right smack in the middle of the greatest stretch of his career.

A wise man somewhere once said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Heading into the 2009 season, Harrington had won three out of the last six majors and finished the 2008 season with more than $4.3 million in earnings.

No matter what line of work you’re in, if you’re not continually trying to better yourself, someone else out there is, and will eventually overtake you.

That being said, this might have been one time in Harrington’s career where he should have sat back and ridden the proverbial wave of success, because unless you’re Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Jack Nicklaus, or Tiger Woods, that type of success does not come along very often.

Since "tweaking" his golf swing, Harrington has missed the cut in seven out of 14 PGA Tour events, has yet to finish within the top-10 at any event and has earned a mere $417,118, which ranks 134th on the tour’s money list.

Harrington does not currently rank within the top-100 in driving distance, driving accuracy, greens in regulation or putts per hole.

All in all, the 2009 season has been one long nightmare for Harrington; and one that has been magnified tenfold now that he is a three-time major champion.

But credit has to be given where credit is due.

At no point throughout this entire ordeal has Harrington once questioned his decision to tweak his swing or lost any confidence in what he was trying to accomplish; and it might finally be paying off.

Harrington went out and blistered Firestone on Thursday afternoon with a six-under-par round of 64, which was his lowest round of the year and gave him a two-stroke lead over the field.  

There was a visible spring to his step, and for the first time since the 2008 PGA Championship, Harrington actually looked as if he had some command over where he was hitting his golf ball.

“I'm definitely happy with the score, and it feels good to have shot the score, and what even feels better and which is quite important for next week is coming down the last couple of holes I'm thinking about the shots” Harrington said following his round.

Harrington began his day on the 10th hole and shot a solid two-under-par 33 on the front-nine.

But, it was on his back-nine (the front-nine at Firestone) that Harrington really caught fire.

Following birdies at the first and second, Harrington’s momentum seemed to go into overdrive at the sixth after getting up-and-down for par from a difficult location in the greenside bunker.

Harrington went on to sink a 26-foot birdie putt on the par-three seventh and a 24-foot birdie putt from just off the front of the green at the par-four eighth.

Harrington pared the ninth to close out a four-under-par 31 on the back-nine and walked off the golf course with a big smile on his face for the first time in a very long time.

Obviously there is still a lot of golf left to play and Harrington has 26 of the best players in the world within just five-strokes of him on the leaderboard.

“I'm well aware that it only matters to hold the lead on Saturday and then really matters on Sunday” Harrington said.  

“But yeah, I'm always a very cautious person in the first round. I don't generally—I'm a great believer that you don't win the tournament on Thursday, you just keep yourself in it.”

It’s true that you don’t win a golf tournament on Thursday, but for Harrington, a 64 on Thursday at a very difficult golf course must feel like a victory for him and his season long quest to master his newly reconstructed golf swing.