Padraig Harrington biography
Padraig Harrington, (born August 31, 1971, Dublin, Ireland), Irish skilled golfer who received two British Open championships (2007 and 2008) and a Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) Championship (2008). He wrote the Encyclopædia Britannica entry on the PGA Championship.
Harrington started {golfing} along with his household at age 5. As an newbie, he made three appearances (1991, 1993, and 1995) for Great Britain and Ireland’s matches towards the United States within the Walker Cup. Harrington accomplished an accountancy diploma earlier than turning skilled in 1995 on the comparatively late age of 24. He had a fast begin, ending 3 times within the high 10 in his first eight skilled tournaments and successful his ninth begin, the Spanish Open in Madrid, in the beginning of the 1996 European Tour season.
Harrington (with companion Paul McGinley) secured victory for Ireland within the World Cup the next 12 months, and he made his Ryder Cup debut in 1999. His success continued into the twenty first century; he was a part of 4 Ryder Cup-winning groups (2002, 2004, 2006, and 2010) and had his first two victories on the PGA Tour in 2005. In 2006 Harrington received the Order of Merit because the European Tour’s high cash winner for the primary time. In May 2007 he grew to become the primary dwelling participant since 1982 to win the Irish Open, and two months later he received his first British Open, at Carnoustie, Scotland. In so doing, Harrington grew to become the primary Irishman to win a significant championship since Fred Daly in 1947, and—since Daly was from Northern Ireland—the primary main winner from the Republic of Ireland. Harrington was named the 2007 European Tour Golfer of the Year.
Harrington’s spectacular play continued in 2008 as he defended his Open title (turning into the primary European to take action in additional than a century) and received his first PGA Championship. His wins gave him three victories within the six main tournaments main as much as and together with the 2008 PGA, a powerful stretch of dominance matched within the earlier 35 years solely by Tom Watson and Tiger Woods. Harrington was each the PGA Player of the Year and the European Tour Golfer of the Year in 2008.
In the following years, nonetheless, Harrington struggled, and he didn't declare one other official PGA Tour occasion till 2015, when he received the Honda Classic. The following 12 months he received the Portugal Masters, his first win on the European Tour since 2008. Harrington competed on the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the place golf made its return after having been absent from the Games for greater than a century, however he did not win a medal.