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WGC BRIDGESTONE INVITATIONALJuly 31, 2008Padraig HarringtonAKRON, OHIO Q. How did it feel to be introduced as the Open Champion on the first tee. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I didn't notice it today at all. I noticed it sometime afterwards, maybe when I was walking on to the 18th green they announced it again. I didn't need that this year. I know I'm the Open Champion. Q. This is arguably the busiest stretch that you guys will play. Well, not arguably, it just flat-out is. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Busiest competitive stretch where every tournament is serious, yeah. At other stages during the year I think I've played tournaments after the Ryder Cup and things like that. But this is the busiest where they're all big events in their own right. Q. Would you have played the FedEx? Would you have played them all had they not built in that off week? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Definitely not. The off week is a major advantage, and I'm depending on it. I'm hoping that off week resets everything. The FedExCup is going to be difficult in that sense if I don't get a good rest during that week and don't come back strong. It will be tough to go through it all because you've got the Ryder Cup, as well. Again, we have another week before the Ryder Cup, so there is some big pluses in the schedule there. I think they did the right thing in order to -- you couldn't do it unless those two breaks were there. Q. Sergio mentioned Nick is maybe trying to get the guys together for the first couple days of your so-called off week to make a sneak trip up there. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Never heard anything about it. Q. I hadn't heard anything about it until he mentioned it a minute ago, too. Maybe it's a tryout for the other guys, I don't know. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I have no idea. I have no idea. I didn't hear anything about it. What week are we talking about? Q. The off week, I believe. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: There's two off weeks, one before and one after. Q. The Tuesday and Wednesday before the Ryder Cup. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I might be at the German Masters, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see on that. I don't know. Certainly I've played the course before at the PGA, and the one thing you always find at the Ryder Cup is we play practice rounds on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. By Thursday we're tired at that stage because it's long practice rounds. So I don't think anybody -- the only reason to go the week before would be to play less, to take out some of the practice rounds the actual tournament week. That might be a good idea. But I know most Ryder Cups, by the time the Friday starts you can't wait for it, because if anything, you've over-played. Q. Last time you took a plane over. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Well, it got rained on, on the practice trip, really rained on, so it was good preparation (laughing). I don't know. We'll have to wait and see. No idea. As I said, it would be nice to maybe not have to do as much work the week of the Ryder Cup. As I said, it can be very arduous Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So it might be a good idea, yeah. Q. Do you have any memories of the Ryder Cups? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I have a lot of memories how holes played. I remember the golf course well. Probably the best memory I have is getting the rebuke from Langer for hitting my 5-wood into the cross drain on the 5th, is it? 4th or 5th hole, there's a drain. It's about 290 and I hit 5-wood into it. He said at the team meeting that night, he said we'll have no delay off the 5th into the drain tomorrow. I was obviously the only one who did it that day. So that's a good memory. I have good memories. I remember the hole, as well, and I think it's just an advantage to anybody who's played a tournament of that intensity going into the PGA because the golf course changes when the heat of battle comes on and you've got a bit of adrenaline. Certainly the last Ryder Cup there, there are definitely shots -- some of the par-3s changed significantly. Q. Were the last couple weeks any less crazy since you've been through this before? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Definitely. Experience is a great thing. I did a few things, but no, it was a lot less. I still went and checked all the markers and they're all flattened down, but I think haven't done as much to the effect of maybe going forward -- it should breeze over very quickly. I did some things, but your first win it's kind of your responsibility maybe to do everything. Second win, you can be a little bit more professional about it and consider that there are big tournaments ahead, being the PGA and the Ryder Cup. Q. When you say markers, what specific markers are you talking about? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Loads of markers, central nervous system, speed, lifting, power output, physical tiredness, jumps, how high you can jump. There's six or seven ways you can tell how sharp you are. Probably the central nervous system is probably the best one to do it. Q. How do you measure that? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: You measure it with this special computerized program with a heart monitor that tells you how your parasympathetic and your autosympathetic responses are. You just see the thing -- you go from just basically instead of having a nice wavy heart rate you have a flat line. What happens is your heart should beat in a rhythm, and it just goes like that when it's stressed. Ball speed, that's probably an easy one to do. I'd be down close to 10 miles an hour club head speed that way. Q. Do you have this in your house? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah. Q. So you measure it every day? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Not every day. I used to bring it with me, the monitor. It just tells you when you're over-training and things like that. Q. (Inaudible.) PADRAIG HARRINGTON: No, I was flat-lined again this year. I'm just saying that hopefully that flat line -- obviously I was six weeks like that after last year's. Hopefully this will come back quicker. You can just do it with a straight counter jump. That tells you straightaway. Ball speed tells it for me. I actually know now I can get up in the morning and tell because I'm used to looking at it and reading it. I can tell myself more or less when I've done too much and when I'm tired. That's what you get when you get a little bit older. You get good at reading signs. Q. What does it change from when it's good and not so good, ball speed? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: When it's poor when I'm at home, certainly the club head speed will go up -- I can push it 10 miles an hour more than what I would play at when I'm sharp. When you're ready to go, you can go a bit more. Centimeters is the difference in the jump. That's probably one of the easiest ones to tell. Same thing, I can measure power output. I can measure the weight when I'm lifting, and I can be down -- last week I was down about 15 percent on what I can get my max power output. Q. A squat or something? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: It's just a squat bar with this thing that you can put on it that measures how fast you can move the weight and what power and effort you're putting into it, and it shows up that you think you're going fast but you're going slow as anything. Q. The shingles last year pretty much was stress related? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, that's what shingles is, a central nervous system thing. Even though I felt quite good at the time, it was saying -- body was saying -- thankfully for me I got shingles. Other people get injuries. If you're a footballer and you get into that situation, you pick up an injury. That's one of the things that's huge now is they watch the players and they can start telling when to rest them, because before a player might think he's okay but he gets injured because his body is saying, hang on a second here, I need a break. A lot of times the injuries were more because they were needing a break. So they now can watch that and keep an eye on it, and they know when to pull it back and say, hang on a second, you need a rest. Q. Break out in a rash? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Shingles is a slightly different version of it, but probably better than some other injury. Q. You said earlier your mind was racing out there today. How many holes did it take before you began to slow your mind down? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: It usually takes a few weeks (laughing). I just struggled. You know, I wasn't with it at times. As I said, I had a chip shot on 14, it was 45 yards, I misjudged it by 20 yards and hit it well. That says you're just not sharp when you do things like that, not quite with it. The whole idea is if I get better each day -- as I said, I didn't do any harm today, which is great for me, and if I can get better each day, that would be great. And hopefully Sunday I'll be good and sharp; and if not, I'll be ready for next week. Certainly I could see it out there. It was hard to keep your mind quiet. I could see all the dangers and all the -- am I going to hit this and that. Q. (Inaudible.) PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I didn't even notice it this year. It was only later on I remembered that he hadn't said it. Yeah, I wasn't waiting for it this time or I wasn't -- I certainly didn't need for him to tell me I was the Open Champion. Q. (Question regarding winning three Open Championships in a row.) PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Absolutely would love to. I would continue with that that way and make other adjustments around other tournaments. Unfortunately for me I need to play less golf in general, but I also need to play golf in order to be -- I'm a better player when I play, just short game-wise and things are sharper. On one hand I want to play more and on the other hand I want to play less. Scheduling is important, so I will have to, as always, sit down and work very hard on my schedule. Other guys may be able to get away with it. I have to make sure I get that right. Q. Certainly the first three majors -- PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, I will look to play, definitely, the same way. But I'm just talking about other events, how can I be better for every event rather than just -- I'm more or less assured what I'm doing for the majors, but just for everything else. Q. When you got home did you find you got more newspaper coverage, media coverage in Ireland winning a second one or less because it was old hat now? PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I couldn't tell you. I don't read the newspaper. Somehow I avoid it. You see some pictures, but I avoid most of it. I would think it was very much the same. I would think it was a big story. Somebody even said I even managed to get the Dubs off the front page of the paper, which makes no sense to you -- Q. That's lost in translation. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: What state are you from? Q. Florida. PADRAIG HARRINGTON: It would be like taking the Miami Dolphins off the front page of the paper if they had a big weekend. The Dubs had a big weekend that weekend. I bumped them off the page. That was a big deal. End of FastScripts |
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