CADDIE'S ROLE:Harrington battled his way through to his first American major in truly gritty fashion
THE 90th US PGA Championship came around with a considerable amount of nostalgia for those who had played the Ryder Cup at the same venue outside Detroit, Michigan, on the famed Oakland Hills Country Club in 2004. The previous jamboree at the South Course was the US Open back in 1996.
There have been a lot of changes since both events; the distance the modern professional hits with technically superior equipment is really the most significant advance in golf.
The bodies who run these major championships, such as the PGA, are constantly looking for ways to improve while testing competitors seemingly to the limit and beyond.
Rees Jones has been responsible for much of the tinkering the USGA have asked him to do on more recent US Open venues. The ingredients tend to be the same: push tees back as far as the perimeters of the course will allow and scoop out a sand trap in the landing zone for the long-hitting pro.
The stuff of genius or just a fundamental solution to current paranoia among the authorities about under-par scores winning major championships?
As ever the modern game is driven by the people with clipboards paying too much attention to statistics and less to the art of playing a challenging golf course while actually enjoying it. The numbers reveal an area the pros regularly hit to and the "creative" designer plops a bunker there. Simple.
Not only was Oakland Hills lengthy at just under 7,400 yards but the surrounding rough was, as the commentator Ian Baker-Finch suggested, on steroids, it was so dense.
Pádraig Harrington seems to be the best pupil this semester adapting to the harsh circumstances thrown at the major competitors.
Just as my boss, Retief Goosen, figured out how to win US Opens earlier this decade, Pádraig has mastered the British Open and in an unusually difficult PGA he battled his way through to his first American major in truly gritty fashion.
The nature of Oakland Hills changed so dramatically overnight last week that practice rounds were irrelevant in terms of preparation for what was presented to the players on Thursday. The greens were much harder and faster and the rough seemed to have been fluffed up and thickened.
The weather changed through a series of thunderstorms from summer to winter over the weekend and we finally got to restart the third round at 7.15am on Sunday with a sharp, icy north-westerly blowing over the course. They were knuckle-down conditions, very much like what we had seen at the Open Championship in Birkdale.
Grinding out a score on the seemingly impossible par holes and taking your opportunity on the relatively easier ones was the key to playing Oakland Hills and Birkdale. Pádraig succeeded at both venues with similar determination and similarly wonderful shot-making.
It is not the classic shots that win you major tournaments, rather the dogged pars in the most unlikely of circumstances - like Pádraig's on 18 last Sunday. This comes less from technical perfection than from sheer mental fortitude.
They called Oakland Hills the "Monster" after Ben Hogan tamed it to win the US Open in 1951. With the recent changes and last week's set-up it was more a monstrosity.
