{"id":444012,"date":"2026-02-25T02:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T02:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/444012\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T02:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T02:23:08","slug":"padraig-harrington-says-it-would-be-great-for-the-ryder-cup-if-tiger-woods-was-captain-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/444012\/","title":{"rendered":"P\u00e1draig Harrington says it would be great for the Ryder Cup if Tiger Woods was captain \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

P\u00e1draig Harrington<\/a>, rather appropriately, had his diplomatic hat on when it came to the issue of whether or not Jon Rahm would be available to aid Europe\u2019s cause when the defence of the Ryder Cup comes around at Adare Manor in Co Limerick in just over 18 months time.<\/p>\n

As things stand, Rahm \u2013 who plies his trade on LIV these days \u2013 was not among the eight LIV players granted conditional releases by the DP World Tour at the weekend, with Tyrrell Hatton and Tom McKibbin included in that octet. So the Spaniard is the one on the outside looking in with regard to being available to Europe, with Luke Donald favourite but not confirmed to take on the captain\u2019s role for a third time.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the launch of the Ireland\u2019s International Sports Diplomacy Strategy (an initiative under the remit of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Culture, Communication and Sport) at the Aviva Stadium, Harrington remarked of the Rahm situation: <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite complicated. I\u2019m not involved, I\u2019m just not on the ground [to know] why it\u2019s happened that way. I don\u2019t know the politics of it. But if you\u2019re the Ryder Cup captain, you\u2019d be doing everything you can get him on your team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know where the rank and file sit. I don\u2019t know where the tournament committee [of the DP World Tour] is sitting. I don\u2019t know where the administration is sitting … the difficulty right now is, what\u2019s the European Tour\u2019s next step? They\u2019ve included these guys. How do they say to those guys, now we\u2019re doing something different? I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s other options. Was that the last option? <\/p>\n

\u201cBut there\u2019s no way the captain and the team will want to go into a Ryder Cup without Jon Rahm and you know, maybe he\u2019s relying on that, and he can rely on it right now. There\u2019s no doubt about that. I have a very good relationship with Jon, as I do with all my team-mates of 2021. He will be forever my team-mate, and I will do everything I can to support and help him going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TigerTiger Woods at Adare Manor in 2022. Photograph: Oisin Keniry\/Getty <\/p>\n

As to the possibility of Tiger Woods being the USA captain at Adare Manor, with the 15-time Major champion looking for time to consider such a possibility, Harrington \u2013 when asked if Woods would make a great captain \u2013 responded: \u201cYou know what? The obvious answer is, yes. But then the other answer is, we don\u2019t really know. It could be intimidating for [players] or it could be the opposite, he could be inspiring. To be a great captain, you don\u2019t necessarily have to be a great player. But it would be great for the Ryder Cup if he was captain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrington started his own season\u2019s work with four appearances on the DP World Tour in the Middle East last month but next week shifts his attention to playing on the Champions Tour in the United States with three events in four weeks \u2013 the James Hardie in Florida, the Cologuard in Arizona and the Hoag Classic in California \u2013 but after that unclear exactly about his schedule.<\/p>\n

What the Dubliner does know is that he is into three of the four Majors (the US PGA, the US Open and The Open, at Birkdale where he won his second Claret Jug in 2008) and also has five Seniors Majors including defences of his titles at the US Seniors Open and the ISPS Handa Senior Open.<\/p>\n

But none of those tournaments has been given priority over another. Indeed, for Harrington, is about more and more about living in the moment.<\/p>\n

As he put it, \u201cI don\u2019t write my goals down at the start of the year any more. I did all those things back in the day. Now I\u2019m just on a wing and a prayer. I\u2019m aware where I\u2019m playing and what ones are important to me. I played for four weeks and I\u2019ve come home and, for the past two-and-a-half weeks, I just hit thousands of balls trying to tear my swing apart. That\u2019s just who I am. I\u2019m very much each week as it comes. There\u2019s no long-term focus in me at all!\u201d<\/p>\n

The gift that keeps on giving, in truth.<\/p>\n

*P\u00e1draig Harrington was speaking at the launch of Ireland\u2019s International Sports Diplomacy Strategy: Raising the bar on Ireland\u2019s global ambition 2026-2030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"P\u00e1draig Harrington, rather appropriately, had his diplomatic hat on when it came to the issue of whether or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[43452,5904,15924,17106,6547,101,8937,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-444012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-dp-world-tour","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-jon-rahm","11":"tag-padraig-harrington","12":"tag-ryder-cup","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tiger-woods","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}