Pádraig Harrington was officially inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame on Monday night in its new home at Golf House Pinehurst in North Carolina. Last week in a Zoom call with Irish media, the three-time major winner reflected on all of his career accomplishments that got him to this point of recognition as one of the game’s all-time greats, and the 51-year-old Dubliner relishes the opportunity “to catch lightning in a bottle” again and keep adding to his championship ledger on the senior circuit. One thing Harrington doesn’t feel he needs to do, however, is get another chance at trying to be a winning Ryder Cup captain.
His team lost in 2021 to a powerhouse American team at Whistling Straits before the landscape changed dramatically with the launching of LIV Golf cleaving a huge rift with a generation of European Ryder Cup heroes. Luke Donald will return to the helm for Team Europe in 2025 at Bethpage Black after a triumphant captaincy last fall in Rome. Would that mean there is a possibility of Harrington getting a second bite at the captain’s apple with the 2027 Ryder Cup being staged at Adare Manor in Ireland – a place where Harrington won his only Irish Open in 2007.
Considering that the list of candidates for European captains was severely cropped with so many presumed choices in the pipeline burning bridges on the way out the door to LIV Golf, might Harrington want another crack at it in his home country? “No,” Harrington said. “I used to say I.
