With Tiger Woods definitively unable to compete, the otherworldly presence of 53-year-old Greg Norman successfully vanquished, and Phil Mickelson able to log 2008 wins at venerable old Riviera and Colonial, but never better 5th in Major championship play, the answer, unequivocally, is Padraig Harrington.
 
Citing a man who’s won the last two Major championships – as well as three of the last six – as the best hardly amounts to world-class insight, but Harrington has also logged four additional top-5 finishes in America this year, including a T5 a The Masters and a 3rd at Riviera.  More importantly, if the consistent excellence of his play has been impressive, what has really set him apart is the ability to break form when most needed – that is, by finding an extra, impressively powerful gear late on Sunday afternoons.  At Royal Birkdale, this ability manifested itself in a stunning four-under-par run over the final six holes, allowing Harrington to pull away from Norman, Ian Poulter and Henrik Stenson down the homestretch.  This past weekend at Oakland Hills, his victory in the PGA Championship was accomplished in somewhat similar fashion, with another final-nine 32 lifting him into contention, and the holing of clutch putts measuring 12, 10 and 15 feet on the final three greens once again lifting him to victory.

It is all fine and good to win Major championships, and any which way one accomplishes that is generally good enough.  But by winning these last two in such epic style, Harrington achieved a level of clutch performance rarely seen in modern professional golf.  It was truly special stuff.

And what of Sergio Garcia, whose watery disaster at the 70th cost him his finest chance yet to capture that elusive Major?  One tends to think he’ll break through one of these years, but at age 28, with an impressive (if slightly depressing) nine top-five Major finishes under his belt, it gets harder and harder to be sure.  Attempts at claiming not to be disappointed during his post-tournament press conference certainly rang a bit hollow – but they were a massive improvement over blaming fate, the golfing gods and a box of tarot cards, as he did in 2007 at Carnoustie.  Sergio’s still quite young, but the clock is ticking…

For the moment – and at least into early 2009 – it Padraig Harrington’s world.


Requiem For A Ball-Striker

Overshadowed somewhat by the PGA Championship was the death, at age 74, of 1969 U.S. Open champion Orville Moody, at his home in Sulphur Springs, TX.  Below appears my profile of Moody in 2005’s The Book of Golfers, but I think there are a couple of preliminary points worth mentioning.  First, Moody, though hardly a glad-handing, charismatic sort, was hugely popular among his peers, and widely recognized as one of the nicer men in golf.  And second, this was one hell of a ball-striker.  Indeed, “Sarge” (nicknamed for his Army rank) hit perhaps the single greatest shot I’ve ever personally witnessed, at the Westchester Classic circa 1980.  Playing the Westchester Country Club’s terribly difficult 12th hole, Moody sat a good 225 yards away from a green elevated at least 50 feet above the fairway, and guarded by a severe fallaway front-right.  To make matters (much) worse, his tee shot had come to rest on the forward side of a small fairway mound, meaning that he had to tackle this jackpot off a dangerously downhill lie.  Moody responded with a 1 iron shot that literally never wavered from the flag, carrying easily onto the green and finishing within 10 feet.  Another of the period’s elite shotmakers, Chi Chi Rodriguez, was paired with Moody that day and looked on wide-eyed, ultimately just shaking his head and saying, with immense feeling, “Great shot, Sarge.”  As was his wont in those days, Moody promptly three-putted for bogey – but nearly three decades later, I remain confident that only a handful of golfers in my lifetime could have played that shot.

And so, without further adieu:

ORVILLE MOODY  (USA)

Perhaps with Hollywood’s recent infatuation with golf-themed movies, someone will see fit bring the remarkable story of Orville Moody (1933-2008) to the big screen.  Moody, after all, walked away from a scholarship at the University of Oklahoma in 1953 to join the Army, rising to the rank of staff sergeant over 14 years while also winning the 1962 All-Service golf title.  In 1967 he elected to give the PGA Tour a shot, then scarcely survived a fruitless rookie season in 1968.  But things changed in a hurry at the 1969 U.S. Open at Houston’s Champions Club where a rock-steady Moody shot 281 and, as the other challengers fell away, emerged victorious, by a single stroke, over Deane Beman, Al Geiberger and Bob Rosburg.

Though something of a stunner at the time, Moody’s victory is really not so perplexing as his superior ball-striking was perfectly suited to Open conditions, an event which traditionally minimizes his gravest weakness, the putter.  Remarkably, Moody never again won on the PGA Tour, three-putting away a golden opportunity at the 1973 Bing Crosby and largely disappearing altogether by the late 1970s.  Though he did manage overseas victories in Hong Kong, Morocco and Australia, Moody’s greatest overall success came – with the advent of the long putter – on the Champions Tour, where he won 11 times between 1984-92 (including the 1989 U.S. Senior Open) and pocketed nearly $4 million.