The gift that keeps on giving. Pádraig Harrington added yet another significant milestone to a storied career when he won the US Senior Open Championship at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, where his second win in the event in four years elevated him alongside Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player as the only players to win multiple Opens and US Senior Opens.
The 53-year-old Dubliner shot a final round 67 for a total of 11-under-par 269 to beat American Stewart Cink by one shot with Spain’s Miguel Angel Jimenez a stroke further back in solo third: Harrington’s financial reward was a cheque for $800,000 but, more importantly, the win saw him lift the Francis Quimet Trophy for a second time.
It also earned him an exemption into next year’s US Open at Shinnecock Hills in New York.
Harrington’s final act of the final round was a tap-in par to seal the deal, but that simple putt back-ended a championship where players – on a course 6,000 feet above sea level – were tasked with computing yardages in the rarefied air along with slick greens and a course examination befitting of the USGA, the championship organisers.
Having started the final round in a three-way tie with Cink and Australian Mark Hensby, the outcome developed into a duel between Harrington and Cink while Jimenez’s closing 64 brought him into the mix.
Harrington’s final round featured five birdies and two bogeys but he’ll also look back on a chip-in birdie on the 18th in Saturday’s third round as an important act in ultimately claiming the win.
His birdies came at the second, third and fifth before a dropped shot at the seventh and then a birdie on the ninth to turn in 33. The back nine was less eventful, a bogey on the 10th and a birdie on the 11th, before a run of seven successive pars to get over the line as Cink bogeyed the 15th to give Harrington the initiative.
Of the added difficulty in computing the distances and club selection at altitude, Harrington said: “You leave that to your caddie, you decide at the start of the week what kind of percentages you are going to use, the uphill, the downhill, and these greens are unbelievably difficult. There is a lot of pressure and ultimately whatever number you pick you have just got to commit to it and be confident and go with it and accept the odd few mistakes during the week.
“You will probably find I made the least of them or got the least of the bad breaks. But that’s golf, you have got to get the good breaks at the right time and maybe hit the right shots sometimes at the right time.”
Harrington – a three-time Major champion (the 2007 and 2008 Opens and the 2008 US PGA), who is in the field for the upcoming 153rd Open at Royal Portrush – became the eighth player to win multiple US Senior Opens on the Champions Tour.
