Padraig Harrington has been on a roll of late, but that roll nearly got derailed by a trip to the bathroom Saturday.
Harrington won four times in his first full PGA Tour Champions season in 2022 and impressed last week by making the cut at the PGA Championship and firing a 69 in the final round. That momentum has carried over to this week’s Senior PGA Championship at the new Fields Ranch East at PGA Frisco, where he holds a one-stroke lead through 54 holes.
Looking at his scorecards this week, it’s not hard to figure out why he’s dominating. Harrington has been nearly-flawless this week and has yet to make a bogey.
But we did say nearly.
Harrington’s only blemish so far this week came on the 16th hole Saturday when he made a double bogey that could have dropped him into a share of the 54-hole lead. With just a sand wedge in his hands, he dumped his approach shot into the hazard and took two tries to get out.
Fortunately for the 51-year-old, he birdied the 18th hole to keep his wire-to-wire solo lead intact with 18 to play.
However, after the round, in a textbook case of TMI, Harrington, unprompted, gave the “silliest excuse ever” for why he lost focus on the 457-yard par-4.
“16 came out of nowhere,” he said after the round. “So, essentially, I went in the toilet. The door was locked. Took me a minutes to realize there wasn’t somebody in there, another few, another while to get the door open. I had, as we are on the Champions Tour, I had the longest pee ever. And then I kind of rushed down the fairway and hit my shot.
“The second shot was kind of innocuous because the pin was so tight I was just playing 15 feet left of it and to be honest, yeah, I just, I wasn’t— I do that sometimes, I just wasn’t focused, I wasn’t into it and I hit a bad shot in the hazard.
“Disappointed I overplayed— you know, I was trying to get that up-and-down, so I’m disappointed that my first lie I went under it. The second one was a bad lie so I blast that out.
“But, yeah, so when you get over 50 it sometimes takes a long time to have a pee,” he continued. “And that was, yeah, that’s my excuse. That’s got to be original, I would assume.”
Original is probably an understatement. We’ll let you imagine how that all went down on your own, but Harrington’s 54th-hole birdie restored his lead by one over Steve Striker as he seeks his second senior major after last summer’s U.S. Senior Open. Stewart Cink is the only other player in double-figures under par. He’s three back of Harrington at 13 under.
“Golf’s a crazy game. It’s just like that,” Harrington said. “Some days you get a, you know, you hit a bad shot and you get a break and you make birdies. Other days you play nice and solid and steady and then it just kind of gets in on you. Yeah, I would be thrilled if I turn up tomorrow and play like I played today.”
