Padraig Harrington wins Honda Classic in play-off

Padraig Harrington aimed at the 'n' in the Honda sign behind the back of the par three, 17th green, at the Palm Beach Gardens golf course in Florida, for the second time in 45 minutes.

On the first occasion when faced with the same remit, he dropped his club, a nanosecond after impact, his face contorted in anguish, as he watched his ball slew right and disappear into the lake that guarded the front of the putting surface; the plop, a gut wrenching acoustic.

At that point, Harrington was leading the Honda Classic on six under, one clear of Daniel Berger, a PGA Tour rookie, who grew up 15 minutes from the venue in the town of Jupiter. The 21-year-old had signed for a 64 and was at that moment clipping wedges down the practice ground, trying to stay loose in the event that a playoff materialised.

Berger went from underdog to odds on favourite in the space of eight minutes after the Irishman could manage no better than a double bogey five, slipping from one ahead, to one behind. The 43-year-old Dubliner had to birdie the last hole and when he stood over the 15-foot putt on the home green, the following would never have entered his head.

When he won the British Open at Birkdale in 2008, he came home in 32 strokes, the exact number he took to negotiate the back nine at Oakland Hills when winning the US PGA Championship later that year, his last victory on the US Tour. If he holed this 15-foot putt he would complete the back nine in 32 strokes.

Then there was the fact that James Hahn was ranked 297th when he won last week’s tournament, the Northern Trust Open, and the man who replaced him at the number in the world rankings was one Padraig Harrington. What are the chances of two successive tournament winners both starting the week of their success on an identical world ranking?

But then what were the odds on Harrington winning a tournament having walked off the course on Sunday night, three over for first seven holes of the final round and four shots behind the leaders of a rain delayed event that would stretch into a fifth day. Oh and he missed a couple of short putts that had driven him to the practice green where he stayed until after nightfall. Long, no doubt, but then nobody knew the script that had been penned, outlandish even in Hollywood terms.

Ian Poulter would visit the water five times during his final round, running up two double bogeys and a treble bogey, seven, yet only finish one shot out of the playoff. Patrick Reed, walked off the 14th green as joint leader but by the time he got to the 18th tee box had dropped four shots and cut a disconsolate, muttering shell of the braggadocio that he usually defines his on course demeanour.

And what of Harrington, a player who, while winning in Indonesia last December, had descended from the penthouse in golf to not quite the doghouse as he would subsequently describe his freefall from world number two, down to the three hundreds.

It started with a six-foot par putt on nine that he described as a pure strike. It continued when his caddie and brother-in-law Ronan Flood asked him whether he would have been satisfied, if asked last Thursday morning, to be in contention going into the final nine holes of the tournament. Those verbal and mental fillips unleashed the competitor in Harrington.

He birdied the 11th, 12th (a putt from a different postcode), 13th and 14th to move to a tie of the lead. He just missed another on 15, showed great control on a downhill putt on the 16th to get up and down before the calamity of the 17th.

Standing over the putt on the 18th he recalled a conversation with his wife Caroline that morning in which she asked me was there any other golfer that he would like to take a putt on his behalf. Harrington said that his answer to her was ‘no, there wasn’t.’ He honoured that memory by rolling in the birdie putt to secure a playoff.

The fist pump, the tight mouth, those intense staring eyes and then the big, broad grin, were echoes of the past, one that housed a three-time Major champion; one of the country’s greatest sportsmen. It was as if his struggles in recent years had been a figment of the imagination.

The 43-year-old Dubliner survived the first playoff hole, a reprise of the 18th, when Berger watched his 12-foot putt burn the edge of the hole, undone by pace. The pair were ferried to the 17th tee, Harrington’s most recent golfing Armageddon.

Twice he walked away from the ball as a buggy revved its engine close-by. He chose the same club, a five-iron, the same visual target, the ‘n’ in the Honda sign, and the same swing thought, to hit a three quarter shot from left to right, as he had done 45-minutes earlier.

That takes some bottle. This time though the outcome was a shot of breathtaking beauty that nestled three feet from the hole. Berger blinked, shoving his ball right as Harrington had done in real time and finding the same watery resolution.

It’s some comeback in every sense of the word.