The Senior Open is back at Sunningdale, near London, this week, and the players have been gushing about the swank host club to which, among other luminaries, Sean Connery and Hugh Grant are rumored to belong.
“Stunning” is how Miguel Angel Jimenez described Sunningdale’s Old Course, the Willie Park Jr. design on which the Open is being conducted. Added Ernie Els, “The grass is perfect. Everything is perfect.” Colin Montgomerie, who has a home in the area, said, “It’s just a lovely place to be,” adding, “All the Americans love it here. They think it’s their — well, it’s our Pine Valley in many ways.” Pine Valley, as in the perennial top-ranked course in the U.S.
Perhaps no player, though, was more effusive in his praise than Padraig Harrington, who said after his first round: “I’ve got to say, every player, every caddie here, this is probably the best golf course we’ve set foot on. You just couldn’t improve on this. If anybody would ever think of changing anything here, this is as good as it gets.”
By the close of play Friday, Harrington probably was feeling even better about the place. That’s because he’d followed his opening three-under 67 with a sparkling 65 to seize the Open lead by a stroke over Thomas Bjorn and K.J. Choi. His round looked perfect on paper — five birdies and 13 pars — but was far from it. “I got in trouble on plenty of other holes,” he said after his round. “Hit some recovery shots and managed my game, but I never showed much confidence out there at all in my swing at all.”
It wasn’t just Harrington’s swing that was uncooperative. The golf gods also threw a couple of curve balls at him in the form of what he later called “three crazy things.”
The first of those came at the par-4 7th when at some point during a swing an acorn detached itself from a tree branch above and nearly plunked Harrington below.
The second came on the par-5 14th where he missed a short putt but not because of a bad read. “A bug landed right down by my shoe as I took my backstroke, and [I was] completely distracted,” Harrington said.
Turns out bad things aren’t the only things that come in three — so do crazy things.
The third bit of weirdness that Harrington encountered came on the par-4 17th. “It was actually a leaf, I didn’t know what it was. Came in front of my ball, and [I] nearly topped it.”
Harrington summed up his round as a “weird day,” but didn’t blame the oddities for any missed opportunities.
“They didn’t cost me,” he said.
Harrington has won two U.S. Senior Opens, and now is in excellent position to claim to add a Senior Open (British edition) to his mantle.
“The bigger golf courses suit me,” he said. “I’m glad to see there is a little bit of moisture on this course. It is starting to firm up a bit. As if it gets a little shorter, that advantage will be taken away from me. I seem to be scoring okay, so maybe I’ll do it a different way this time.”
