‘Fall into that trap’: Major winner is critical of how rounds assessed

Would you rather shoot 70 or 71? 

What about a 71 while swinging well, or a 70 swinging poorly? 

Padraig Harrington says he knows what pros would choose. 

“Definitely players will be happier swinging the club well and shooting 71,” he said, “than swinging the club badly and shooting 70.

“It doesn’t make sense, but that’s the nature of the beast.”

Why? The thought’s based on how players treat form. Tuesday, ahead of the Senior PGA Championship, the three-time major winner had been asked how he measures it, and the question led to a short back-and-forth over how, yes, a scorecard asks for only scores.  

Players, though, account for more than that, Harrington said. 

“I think we get caught up as players measuring form in how much control we have of our swing, he said, “whereas the reality should be how well we’re scoring and that’s it. So I think when you’re scoring well, you make good decisions, you do things right, and it kind of snowballs in the right direction. 

“When you’re focused on that — yeah, so it should be really — form should be results based and that’s it. But I think as players we get sucked into wanting to judge our game by how we feel about our swing and how much control we have. But score is all that matters really at the end of the day.”

Still, Harrington said, players get “drawn into this game of swing rather score.”

And what you “deserve to score.”

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“It’s what you scored,” Harrington said. “So we do fall into that trap of always trying to judge our score against what we think we deserved, which is not really relevant. It’s what you scored and that’s it.”

Do players ‘deserve’ anything?

No, Harrington said. 

“That’s my point, you don’t,” he said. “But the longer you play it, the more you feel like if you swing it well and you hit it well, you have some predictability in things like that, which there is merit to that, but I think the fact is you don’t deserve anything, and the score is all that counts at the end of the day.”

Here, Harrington had another scenario.

“If you were trying to teach a kid and you asked the teenager how they played,” he said, “you’d want to hear their score; you don’t want to hear, ‘I played well, but I had 36 putts,’ but yet we fall into that category of always trying to justify that we’re playing well. 

“But at the end of the day, the score is the score in golf, and that’s it.”

As for other pros? Steve Stricker was also asked about the subject and was told about Harrington’s thoughts. 

“I think form for me is how I’m hitting it, how I’m feeling about my swing at the time, how the ball is going, really,” Stricker said. “I think if I’m comfortable seeing my ball going a certain direction and it continues to go in the same direction that I want it to go in, then I feel like I’m in good form. Whether I’m hitting it great or not, at least the ball is doing what I want it to do, and I can feel good about that.  

“But I can see where Harrington would say scoring is the ultimate, and it is. You grind it out and get a good score. But I like to see and feel good about what my swing is doing to feel like I’m in good form.”