The PGA TOUR’s Player of the Year honor, until Sunday at Oakland Hills, was being conceded to Tiger Woods. And with good reason.
In six starts, Woods won four times, finished in the top 10 in the other two, and capped it off with that awe-inspiring playoff triumph on wounded knee at the U.S. Open.
To deprive Woods — who has won three consecutive Player of the Year awards and nine in his career — somebody had to do something special.
Enter Padraig Harrington.
Never has a golfer won two majors and not been rewarded as Player of the Year by a vote of the membership. Simply put, two majors trumps anything else that has happened this year, including Tiger’s accomplishments before his season was shortened due to injury.
Not only will Harrington’s back-to-back major victories at the Open Championship and PGA Championship be remembered at voting time, so will the way he finished the rain-soaked tournament at Oakland Hills — a pair of 66s that he posted on Sunday, a spectacular display of golf on a course that left so many of his colleagues gasping for air.
There is precedent for Harrington outdistancing Woods when the TOUR members cast their ballots.
In 1998, David Duval led the TOUR with four victories (no majors). He topped the money list with $2,591,031. In addition, he led the Presidents Cup team eligibility list and won the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average (69.13).
By any measure, it was a season worthy of Player of the Year.
Meanwhile, Mark O’Meara won just twice that year — but both came in majors, the Masters and the Open Championship. Those two major victories put O’Meara over the top in the Player of the Year voting. Duval finished a close second.
The same thing should happen this year. Harrington deserves to win Player of the Year. He’s currently fourth on the money list and has four other top five finishes besides his two majors, all impressive stuff. If he wins the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup, or even just one of the four Playoff events, he’ll should seal the deal.
But even if he doesn’t, those two major victories will be enough for him to join O’Meara and Vijay Singh (2004) as the only players to win Player of the Year in the Tiger Era.
