{"id":670153,"date":"2026-05-14T10:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T10:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/670153\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T10:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T10:03:10","slug":"padraig-harrington-aiming-to-summon-his-a-game-for-unlikely-tilt-at-pga-championship-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/670153\/","title":{"rendered":"P\u00e1draig Harrington aiming to summon his A-game for unlikely tilt at PGA Championship \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The gift that keeps on giving, P\u00e1draig Harrington<\/a> has returned for a 27th appearance in the PGA Championship. True to form, he still believes.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery person I meet this week is a stop and hello and a handshake. I haven\u2019t seen them in nine months,\u201d quipped Harrington \u2013 a winner of the Wanamaker Trophy in 2008 \u2013 of how his preparations have been slightly disrupted in getting reacquainted with his peers on tour. Much of his itinerary these days is spent on the Champions Tour, which accounts for him seeing less of some people.<\/p>\n

Harrington will feature in three of the majors this season. He is in the PGA Championship as a past champion, into next month\u2019s US Open as the current US Senior Open champion and qualifies for the Open as a past champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel great about my game,\u201d he said. \u201cSome weeks maybe all the things haven\u2019t come together. I\u2019ve certainly had some trials and tribulations this year on the greens compared to last year. Hopefully I\u2019m through that. I\u2019m definitely swinging better in terms of hitting it straighter. Maybe not as quick as I was last year, but straighter. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0PGA Championship 2026: Tee times, what TV channel is it on, weather, players to watchOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s lots of good stuff for the rest of the year, but I do feel like I\u2019m under a little bit of stress this weekend, which is kind of what happens when you come out with the young guys. You feel like you need your A-game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got to be a little bit more comfortable about my game and what I\u2019m doing. When you think you need your A-game, your B-game turns up. When you think you need your B-game, your A-game turns up. You\u2019ve got to feel comfortable in the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schauffele knows the value of friendship\"XanderXander Schauffele plays himself out of the bunker on the 12th hole during a practice round prior to the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. Photograph: Andrew Redington\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Xander Schauffele had some words of advice for parents and children on the process of starting out in golf.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents, just to kind of let your kid enjoy the sport as much as possible, or any sport they\u2019re playing,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd to any young kid, a really good thing that I had was a friend to play with. <\/p>\n

\u201cGolf is very much an individual sport and can get a bit lonely, especially for a kid when you see a bunch of other kids playing team sports. So having a friend, someone that\u2019s better than you, is always a really good thing. You\u2019ve got someone to lean on and someone that\u2019s going to make you better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trouble in store at \u2018severe\u2019 11th\"TheThe severity of the 11th hole at Aronimink Golf Club has not gone unnoticed ahead of the PGA Championship. Photograph: Michael Reaves\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

The talk of the caddie shack ahead of the championship is the conditioning \u2013 and severity \u2013 of the 11th green, with some estimating it could prove problematic when scorecards are in hand.<\/p>\n

The PGA of America, however, would appear to be ahead of the game.<\/p>\n

In addressing the issue, Kerry Haigh, the chief championships officer, admitted the green has been managed to run slower than other putting surfaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 11th green is the most severe greens complex on the golf course depending on the speed. The hole location has to be determined based on the speed of the green,\u201d said Haigh.<\/p>\n

McKibbin has \u2018no regrets\u2019 about joining LIV Golf\"TomTom McKibbin chips from the rough at Aronimink Golf Club. Photograph: Andrew Redington\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Tom McKibbin\u2019s education in the majors is an ongoing one, emphasised by his missed cut on his debut at the Masters. However, the 23-year-old is convinced the US PGA Championship offers an opportunity to contend.<\/p>\n

He is also looking to put aside all the noise about LIV Golf<\/a>\u2019s woes. McKibbin \u2013 a teammate of Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton on that circuit, which will have its funding cut <\/a>at the end of the year<\/a> \u2013 claimed he had \u201cno regrets\u201d about making the jump to that startup tour.<\/p>\n

On the topic of making his sixth career appearance in a major, with a best finish of tied-41st in the 2024 US Open, McKibbin remarked: \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve improved a lot in different aspects of my game and I am more comfortable. They\u2019re all different in their own way and all provide a good test of golf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Word of Mouth <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes it unique is the strength of the field; the amount of players that are in the top-100 in the world is the most out of all the four majors. It\u2019s about just a good test of golf on a strong golf course . . . and if you want to achieve amazing things in this game you have to lift all four majors. So it\u2019s everybody here, it\u2019s a huge goal.\u201d \u2013 Justin Rose, who won his only major so far at the US Open in 2013, on the merits of the PGA Championship compared to the other three majors.<\/p>\n

By the Numbers: 174<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how many bunkers are located around the Aronimink course for the US PGA Championship, although not all of them are in play off the tee for tour players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gift that keeps on giving, P\u00e1draig Harrington has returned for a 27th appearance in the PGA Championship.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,196621,85,81845,235389],"class_list":["post-670153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-padraig-harrington","tag-sports","tag-tom-mckibbin","tag-us-pga-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}