Padraig Harrington has long held a reputation as one of the game’s hardest workers, and in more recent years, the 55-year-old has also acquired a devoted following on social media, where he regularly dispenses swing advice and course-management wisdom.
But a recent online escapade threw the three-time major winner (and three-time U.S. Senior Open winner) for a serious loop. Harrington became the latest player to take on the DP World Tour’s “Chase the Ace” challenge. The goal? Make a hole-in-one on a par-3 with 500 chances.
The setting: the picturesque 8th hole at the K Club’s Palmer South Course. Harrington selected the pin location and the distance of 137 yards.
“Sounds simple enough,” Harrington said. “Except the odds of making a hole-in-one are 2,500 to 1.”
Harrington’s endeavor began with a series of striped shots — but he quickly discovered that he was using the wrong club. Some on-the-fly adjustments resulted in a few shots that landed within eight feet of the pin — but the ace remained elusive.
Harrington’s full episode is 28 minutes long, and you can watch it in its entirety here on YouTube — but we’ll fast-forward to the spoiler alert. After hitting 500 shots over the course of five hours, Harrington came up empty.
“It’s harder that you think,” he said.
At this week’s Amgen Irish Open, Harrington is in the field for his 31st consecutive year — a DP World Tour record. Ahead of Thursday’s start of play, Harrington was asked about the 500-shot experience.
“I cannot believe I did not have a hole-in-one,” he said. “I was so cocky, I’m going to do this. I picked the pin position, 137 yards. So bad I actually want to go and do it again. Yeah, I thought I’d do it.”
Despite the disappointment of failing to record an ace, Harrington did, however, come away with an unexpected conviction: Don’t ever believe someone who claims they hit 1,000 balls in one practice session.
“I took five hours and I had a 20-minute break where there’s two groups — we had to let two groups play through,” he said. “I found it hard after the 20 minutes to come back and play. I had about half a dozen, at least, coffees and half a dozen Diet Cokes and kept powering through it.
“By the way, that was 500 shots with one practice swing on most shots, OK. Very rarely did I take none and very rarely did I take more than one practice swing,” he continued. “So one practice swing, hit it. It took five hours, really going without stopping. So if anybody ever tells you that they hit a thousand golf balls, absolute codswallop. Five-hundred balls. Five solid hours with one 20-minute break. So you can’t do more than 100 golf balls an hour and that was rushing through it, and you are absolutely done for the next day. Like my speed dropped off the planet for three or four days after that. Anybody telling you they are hitting 2,000 balls, 3,000 balls, codswallop. No chance. They can do it one day but not more than one day. Impossible. The physicality of it would blunt you so badly.”
Despite the fatigue he endured by participating in the challenge, Harrington said he would absolutely be game for another go.
“It was great fun. I’d do it again in a heartbeat but not in a hole — 5-iron 137 yards. I picked a hole that had 500 yards of clean air in front of it, and it just got a little cold. But what fun, I’ve got to say. To be honest, I’d do it next Monday if they gave me the chance at Adare. I have nothing else to do next Monday at Adare, anyway. So maybe 17 at Adare, 500 shots.”
The post After 500 attempts at making a hole-in-one, Padraig Harrington came away with 1 conviction appeared first on Golf.
