AMGEN IRISH OPEN

September 12, 2024

Padraig Harrington

Royal County Down GC

Quick Quotes

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: Always good to finish with a par when you're struggling down the last.

Yeah, it was a tough day. Greens are very, very fast. Playing fast. So just made conditions, even though you couldn't have asked for nicer conditions, it was still pretty tough. I made some incredible up-and-downs and most of my drop shots were kind of the better holes I played, a bit innocuous. A couple of lob-wedges. A strange day but certainly some miracle up-and-downs. Every time you listed your head up and looked around, you got some hope because you could see a lot of carnage going on. What's he doing over there?

So yeah, it was a tough day but it was actually a day to have a little bit of a look around and see that the scoring wasn't going so well for everyone and to see that players were struggling in it. Even though the conditions, really while it wasn't warm, it wasn't exactly really windy, was it.

It wasn't too bad at all. The greens are very fast. I know it's extreme but like Thomas Detry's ball blew off the green on 8 and into an unplayable lie.

Q. Most exposed green on the course.

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: He caught a gust and it was the heaviest gust of the day and his ball was in motion when it caught the gust. The greens, I think they are telling us they are 10.5 but they putt pretty quick.

A lot of putts you're standing over, you're never like really confident of hitting them because you know if you have a three- or four-footer down hill and you miss it, you're going to have a 6-footer back up the hill. It's a lot of' effort to pay attention all day. You feel like you've worked. It's a lot of work today.

Q. When you're talking to other players, do they whinge about these conditions?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: No. I think players -- no, not at all actually. I think players are the same way. This is different. You know, I think they embrace it on the week that we're in. I'm not sure they would want to spend their -- every tournament around these conditions but they certainly see this as a different week. It's a European thing, we get thrown up different places around the world that you get all sorts of conditions. So they come here and they go, isn't this a great event. Let's get the head down and get on with it.

But they do find it difficult. It's not natural to a lot of guys, and as I said, this one, the greens, as I said, just seemed very, very fast for -- they would be much faster now than an open, even though they probably say they are the same speed, they are quite pure, the greens, they are very smooth. There seems to be a little bit of grain in them.

So you get anything going downhill, downwind, it's hard to chip the ball close. You know, we were saying that out there, if a chip kind of moves and it looks like it's going three, four feet, all of a sudden it's eight feet, just gets down that slope a bit. It's the challenge that they expect and what we kind of want.

Yeah, you want to get a few breaks like I did on No. 1. That was unbelievable good time for me, 10th hole to make an eagle. I'm looking at the back nine, and all of a sudden I'm 1-under par and somewhat in the tournament.

Q. Normally 2-over first day in a Champions Tour, PGA TOUR, that's your chances of winning gone.

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: You shoot 2-under you're in trouble. Look, 2-over, I'd like to have put -- I'd like to have played better. But when I look at the bogeys, as I said, two of them, three of them are 100-yard shots that I made bogey off, and the other was a three-putt, and one more bogey where I was well and truly -- well, I got under my 8-iron shot. Missed a 4-footer.

So I could have avoided the bogeys, no problem. But as I said there was a couple of all-time up-and-downs out there. So like myself and Nick, I could have had a lost ball on No. 3, is it, and I got it up-and-down. We were going over there and we were getting the clock started like, okay, like ready, off you go sort of thing. You're really thinking this could be a lost ball and we found it and I got up-and-down. Same on the back of 6. I got a great up-and-down out of the downslope and the heavy rough. The lads were suitably impressed with my ability to get it up-and-down as I was going around.