[quote=“twiceasnice97, post: 846345, member: 1061”]young girl in love posts photo of sleeping boyfriiend
young lad heading to the flesh pots of asia for two months takes the opportunity to go as a free agent by feigning rage at a nonsense incident
can you feel sorry for her while quietly saying well played young man?[/quote]
They don’t, but they all finish with a reply from you you oddball
Those cunts in the Sunday Indo somehow managed to chop the end off this article from Kimmage on Harrington, but even missing the last third or so, its still a good read. Harrington really has taken this hobby of his too seriously it seems, the nutjob. Feel free to search out the final third of it where he describes how he’s had surgery on his eyes 4 times and still wears glasses.
[SIZE=6]That’s who I am. The only thing I know is that it never came easy to me. It’s always been a search’[/SIZE]
PAUL KIMMAGE – 13 OCTOBER 2013
[SIZE=5]The inside of Pádraig Harrington’s head has always been a fascinating place, but while Paul Kimmage struggles to apply logic to his many attempts to improve his game, Harrington is much more relaxed.[/SIZE]
THREE weeks ago, on a crisp Friday afternoon at his new home in Paris,Jonathan Sexton was signing a copy of Becoming a Lion, his just-published diary of a season, when he was reminded of something he had once been told by Ireland’s most decorated golfer. “Pádraig Harrington says that you can tell the size of someone’s ego by the size of the first letter of their autograph.” (His ‘J’ was modest.)
Four days later Ger Brennan, the Dublin centre back, was being interviewed by Miriam O’Callaghanabout his nerves before the All-Ireland final when he was also reminded of Harrington: “I’ve heard Pádraig Harrington speak about nerves in sport and he says that if you’re not nervous, you’re not alive.”
A week after that, Harrington received a letter from the Royal Irish Academy of Music, thanking him for a talk he had given to their most gifted young musicians a year before. “Christopher Ellis, the cellist, went on to win the highest mark award in chamber music at Féis Ceol and most recently received the Flax Trust Award at the Clandeboye Music Festival. His mum, Paula, emailed us at the RIAM recently and said: ‘That talk from Pádraig Harrington has left a profound effect on his memory and in dealing with performing.’
When Harrington talks, winners listen and many of Ireland’s finest coaches — Declan Kidney (2009 Grand Slam), Brian Cody (2009 All-Ireland), Conor Counihan (2010 All-Ireland), Jim Gavin (2013 All-Ireland) — have profited from knocking on his door.
But to whom does Harrington turn?
Five years have passed since he won the US PGA[/URL] at [URL=‘http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Oakland,_CA’]Oakland[/URL] Hills — his third major championship — and his game continues to decline. He hasn’t won a tournament since, has slid from third to 98th in the world rankings and as things stand will not play at [URL=‘http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Masters_Tournament’]the Masters[/URL] or the [URL=‘http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/U.S._Open_Golf_Championship’]US Open next year. What Pádraig Harrington needs now, it would appear, is a talk from Pádraig Harrington. But would he listen? Would it work?
I quote him a passage from the Gospel according to Matthew and that scene from Mount Calvary where Jesus is being mocked on the cross by the chief priests, scribes and elders: “He saved others but he cannot save himself.”
He’s impressed.
“You’ve got to the heart of this very quickly, haven’t you?” he smiles.
The heart of it? No, that would take weeks studying the books that now shape his thoughts.
‘The Talent Code’ — a book by Daniel Coyle that draws on cutting edge research to reveal that we can all achieve our full potential if we train our brain the right way.
‘Easier Said Than Done’ — a book by Rick Jensen detailing “the undeniable, Tour-tested truths” we must apply to play to our full potential on the golf course.
‘The Brain That Changes Itself ’ — a book by Norman Doidge that reveals the brain’s ability to repair itself through the power of positive thought.
‘Free Throw’ — a book by Tom Amberry, a 72-year-old basketball-loving podiatrist, who entered the Guinness Book of Records for sinking 2,750 shots in a row from the free throw line.
‘Bounce’ — a book by Matthew Syed that examines the science of success.
‘Golf is Not A Game of Perfect’ — a book by Bob Rotella that analyses the doubts, fears and frustrations that haunt every golfer.
The heart of it? No, that would take weeks analysing the mental keys he has been taking to the golf course.
‘Excellence not perfection.’
‘Consistency equals consistent thinking.’
‘You become what you believe.’ ‘Win ugly.’
‘Choose your mindset.’
‘Be nice to yourself.’
‘Create your own reality.’
‘Love strategy as your edge.’
The heart of it? No, that would take a morning on the range, listening to his contemporaries.
“Pádraig’s problem is that he’s always right. He would argue black was white.”
“He won three majors and decided to change! Where’s the sense in that? He would have won a fortune if he had stopped tinkering.”
“I’ve never met anyone so stubborn. A story that sums him up? He spent his whole career railing against the long putter and on the day they announced it was going to be banned, he decides to take it out!”
“There’s something new every week. You watch him practising sometimes and you’d swear he never played the game before. He’ll be strapping himself to the bag next!”
The heart of it? No, that would take a seat at the meeting he shared recently with JP McManus[/URL] and Dermot Desmond before the [URL=‘http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Dunhill_(designer)’]Dunhill Links.
Desmond: “You keep telling me you’re playing great but it’s not happening on the golf course.”
Harrington: “I know.”
Desmond: “I think you should go back to Bob (Torrance).”
Harrington: “No.”
Desmond: “Go back to Bob.”
Harrington: “No.”
Desmond: “Why not?”
Harrington: “Because my golf
swing isn’t the issue. I’m swinging the golf club better now than I have ever done but I’m just not scoring well. I used to walk off the golf course thinking I had played like 70, and sign for 68. Now I walk-off thinking I have played like 70, and sign for 72.”
McManus: “And what’s the answer? How is that happening?”
Harrington: “I don’t know, I’m . . . I guess befuddled is the word. I’ve always been someone who looked at a problem and said ‘Okay, let’s do X, Y and Z and we’ll get an outcome.’ But at the moment I can’t figure what X,Y and Z are.”
McManus: “Well Pádraig, sometimes when you don’t know the answer to a question, you have to move onto a question you do know the answer to.”>
The heart of it? No, that would take you back to Stackstown Golf Club, the place that formed his “pokey old swing” and ability to chip like God.
“Conditions dictated who I am. If I was brought-up on a nice range, in nice weather, I would probably have hit the ball with a lot more ease, but I was brought- up on a tricky golf course in horri- ble conditions. At Stackstown, if you put the ball in the air for eight seconds you were going to lose it because it would blow out of bounds. So you were better off making a pokey old swing and getting it down quickly. The greens were really difficult — you had to be a superb putter with great imagination and I was good at that. I could chip and I could putt. ThisiswhoIam,andithas always been who I am. Am I going to change? No.”
The heart of it? No, that would take you straight to the bottom line.
What if the thing that had made him great was also destroying him?
THE month is April, 1996. We are sitting in the lounge at Stackstown, looking out on the fairways that shaped him, two months after his debut as a professional. It’s gone well — he’s finished 23rd at the Moroccan Open, made the cut in five (out of five) events and pocketed almost 12 grand — but he’s taking nothing for granted.
He’s not dreaming of playing at The Masters[/URL] (it was the morning of the opening round) and is reluctant to discuss his targets or aspirations which makes him odd, I guess, but interesting because he is ‘deep’. A ‘thinker.’ When I sug- gest that [URL=‘http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Greg_Norman’]Greg Norman[/URL] deserves finally to win a Masters, he quotes the classic line from [URL=‘http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Clint_Eastwood’]Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven: “Deserve has got nothing to do with it.” And he seems more energised by failure than success.
He tells me a story about 1990, his breakthrough year as an amateur, and a career-changing moment at the Irish Youths Championship in Dundalk when he blew a two-shot lead in the last four holes to lose to David Errity. The defeat was crushing but revelatory — he had lost because he had been confident he would win.
“Most golfers thrive on confidence,” he explained. “I can only play with fear. When I’m confident, I’ll stand there thinking ‘Yeah, this is good,’ and then, at the last minute my focus will widen — ‘Don’t hit it over there’ — and I’ll put myself in trouble. When I’m not confident, I’ll see the water and the out of bounds and the intensity the fear brings narrows my focus.”
A week after our interview he started a run: eighth at the Cannes Open, seventh in Valencia and tenth at the Italian Open in Bergamo. Then, in just his tenth professional start, he won the Spanish Open in Madrid. The sport had found a new and unlikely champion — a tea-totalling, non-smoking Dubliner whose long game wasn’t pretty but who could chip and putt like God. Could it last? The jury was out.
“I see it today,” he says. “Some kid turns up and shoots 68 but hits it badly and you think ‘That’s unlikely to happen again.’ And if it does happen for the week, it’s unlikely to happen the following week, and if he gets on a run, it will last no more than 18 months. I did that for 14 years.
“I’m sure every person I played with, walked-off the golf course thinking ‘He won’t do it tomorrow.’ And I did do it tomorrow. Or ‘He won’t do that all week.’ And I did do it all week. But mentally it was tough. It’s harder, when you’re under pressure (with your swing) to play solid, consistent, golf but being on edge was obviously a good thing for me. I was 12 years as a pro before I came out of my winter break not believing that it was all going to be gone.”
Twelve years? That will be Sunday, July 22 and the 2007 Open at Carnoustie when he bounced back from an ugly drive on the 72nd hole to claim his first Claret Jug. A year later, he defended it at Royal Birkdale and entered the pantheon of the gods with a third Major title at Oakland Hills. His coach, Bob Torrance, was glowing.
“Pádraig is the best pupil I’ve worked with,” he said, “not because of what he has done but because of how close he is to how good he can be.”
But his pupil, typically, did not agree: “Mentally and physically, I’m not anywhere near where I could be.”
Two mistakes kept him awake at night; both were errant drives — the 72nd at Carnoustie when he had hit way right and found the Barry Burn, and the 72nd at Oakland Hills when he had missed right again and found the fairway bunker.
“At the end of 2008,” he says, “I had peaked at world number three but I felt I was a long way behind Phil Mickelson[/URL] and [URL=‘http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Tiger_Woods’]Tiger Woods and needed to up my game to catch them.”
Upping his game meant long hours on the range with Torrance and frequent trips to a new facility in California — the Titleist Performance Institute — where he spent weeks analysing the biomechanics of his swing.
“At TPI, they look at your body and swing on a computer and give you all the parameters. I was like a kid in a candy shop. I brought Bob out and said ‘These guys are not the enemy’ but I got caught between two stools. There’s no doubt that if I had just listened to Bob, I would have played better golf. I didn’t listen to Bob. I needed to find out ‘Why am I hitting these double-wide shots?’ And we spent 18 months arguing.”
In August 2011, after a 12-year partnership, Harrington announced they had parted ways. A month later, he started working with Peter Cowan and believes, after a two-year collaboration, that he has finally solved the flaws in his swing. “It’s funny,” he says, “but I always wanted to be that kid on the range who hit the golf ball well and now I’m there. Teeto-green, I hit the ball so much better than I ever did.”
There is just one problem . . .
IT’S a Monday morning at his home in Dublin. He has spent the morning chipping and putting and sits down for the interview with a cup of tea and a scone. Two Claret Jugs — perhaps the most lovely trophy in sport — sit on the island unit of the kitchen. The Wanamaker Trophy — gloriously shiny and huge — adorns the kitchen table. He has called the house ‘Elysian Fields’ and as you sit, marvelling at his name on the trophies, you are reminded of Maximus and his battle cry in ‘Gladiator’: “What we do today will echo in eternity.”
Harrington has taken care of eternity; it’s today we’ve come to talk about.
Paul Kimmage: What’s that like? You come down here every morning for breakfast with two of the most coveted trophies in golf.
Pádraig Harrington: I don’t see them in the morning, if you know what I mean. I see them when somebody brings them up and I deliberately bring them up myself when I need to. When I’m doing corporate outings now, I generally start off with — and this is a joke, I’m just having fun — but I generally start off with: ‘When I won my first major…'But yeah,I use it to lighten the load on me, no doubt about it, and that’s something I said I wouldn’t do. I said I’d wait until I retired before I would enjoy the wins but I’m dipping into them now and taking stock of the fact that I won those events.
PK: You were back in Carnoustie last week at the Dunhill links?
PH: Yeah.
PK: How did it feel going back? PH: Well, you’re always gutted when you finish badly. Professional golfers who par the last to shoot 70 are always happier than the guys who three-putts the last to shoot 69. It’s not logical, but they are happier shooting 70 than the guy shooting 69. I bogeyed the last (to shoot 76) and I know I have to recover quickly and reset myself. There are people waiting for autographs and you can’t afford to be sulking, so I said to my caddie as I was walking off: ‘I’m glad I won an Open Championship here.’
PK: What did that mean?
PH: Just that. I had won an Open Championship there. It changes your outlook. Would I have rather shot 69 and not won an Open Championship? No.
PK: But surely that’s the given in all of this?
PH: No, it’s not the given.
PK: What I mean is, if someone had sat you down ten years ago and offered you a choice: “You’re going to win three Majors but never going to hit a decent golf shot after that,” you would have ripped their hand off.
PH: Of course you would, but if you were to take that attitude . . . I do believe I can win another one, and that’s why I’m going on. If I didn’t believe that I would stop. Why would I bother? Because nothing else is going to compare. So yeah, I’ve won three Majors but golf is more about what you did last week, not what you did in the past. When I finish, it will be much more about what I did in the past and those three Majors will bring me immense joy. And in many ways I was cheating last week because I was dipping into that, but I needed to at the time.
PK: It’s five years since you won at Oakland Hills. David Walsh suggested recently that instead of all those hours you’ve spent since on the practice ground, you would have been better off reading Wordsworth: ‘Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous form of things: we murder to dissect.’
PH: I one hundred per cent believe in that but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to do it. That’s who I am. That’s who I’ve always been.
PK: That’s how you got here? PH: I can’t change who I am.
I’ve got to work with who I am. I can change how I work but I can’t change who I am.
PK: I’ve noticed your latest routine on the range: You’re using what looks like a rubber ball, strapped to your left foot?
PH: Yeah.
PK: How does that work?
PH: It makes my left foot — and you’ll see I’ve changed my shoes this year — but it makes my left foot work much harder to stabilise, which gets my hip, further up the chain, to decelerate and lock-up when I’m hitting the golf ball. It’s a technical thing . . . but I love drills, because I can put that on my foot and I don’t have to think about it.
PK: And what’s the technical goal?
PH: To make my left hip stabilise earlier in my downswing; if you want to accelerate, you need to get something to stop, and my hip has never stopped and that’s led to . . . It’s another way of improving my golf swing.
PK: You’ve changed your shoes?
PH: Yeah, I wear a flat heel.
PK: Why?
PH: It makes my feet work harder. Before I wore shoes that supported me, these don’t. These make you do the work.
PK: Why is that better?
PH: Because I am trying to get my feet to work properly in order to stabilise my hip.
PK: And there’s another routine where you shove your arse-out?
PH: That’s for the tilt of my hips.
PK: Let me quote you one of your contemporaries: “Sometimes he looks like a guy who has never played the game before.”
PH: It’s only a drill. And I don’t care what they say. I don’t think I was ever too worried about . . .
PK: What other people were saying?
PH: Yeah.
PK: What about this: “He’ll be strapped to the bag next.”
[B]PH: /B Well, if I thought it would help me I would.
PK: You would concede that you’re stubborn?
PH: Yes, it’s got me where I am.
PK: What about this from Dermot Desmond: “He’s smart enough to get there but stubborn enough to make the journey long.”
[B]PH: /B That is a good quote . . . Could I argue with that? Yeah, I probably could argue with it.
PK: Or this: “He would argue that black was white.”
Just saw the Sunday Indo TV ad for their spread on the “great” Gerry Ryan. Asking why no one is commemorating his anniversary and did he remind us too much of ourselves.
o_O
Truly nauseating.
[QUOTE=“Spidey, post: 943347, member: 289”]Just saw the Sunday Indo TV ad for their spread on the “great” Gerry Ryan. Asking why no one is commemorating his anniversary and did he remind us too much of ourselves.
o_O
Truly nauseating.[/QUOTE]
Just heard it on the radio-nauseating is the word. Fucking hell-the women who loved him and the men who bailed him out. FOAD.
Would that melanie verwoed cunt not just get the message and fuck off, we dont care about you or your dead jabba the hutt wannabe
Village simpleton Fionnan Sheehan had a front page “opinion” piece attacking Gerry Adams yesterday. His cutting analysis that Adams enjoys more support from Sinn Féin voters than from supporters of other parties was deemed newsworthy enough to take the front page slot. He lost the run of himself then, talking about Jean McConville, “muder, abduction, torture, orchestrating a terrorist campaign,” “the Sinn Féin cult” and then somehow linking that all into the Liam Adams case and the words “child rapist.” He then wanders on aimlessly, somehow arriving at praise for Micheal Martin who met Dr Anthony McIntyre who lives in fear of his safety - but to whom none of the above loaded terms apply apparently.
Padraig Mac Loughlainn posted this on Facebook yesterday:
Exclusive in tomorrow’s Irish Independent: Adams shot JFK
Niamh Horan’s smart and ballsy moment
Why do they have to be ‘maverick’?
[QUOTE=“Piles Hussain, post: 1016457, member: 363”]Niamh Horan’s smart and ballsy moment
Why do they have to be ‘maverick’?[/QUOTE]
Article is incomprehensible. If a kid wrote that stream of conscious mess you might forgive the lack of structure and rambling sentences
Having said that Ronan is an alright sort.
Canny McSavvey
Great article good to see Niamh back at the top of her game
[QUOTE=“Piles Hussain, post: 1016457, member: 363”]Niamh Horan’s smart and ballsy moment
Why do they have to be ‘maverick’?[/QUOTE]
what in the name of sweet fuck:
“Sean Dunne once pulled up on the runway after a trip away to a rugby match. He looked wide-eyed out the window, saw an even bigger model parked beside him, turned to his mate and quipped: “There’s a problem when your electrician has a bigger jet than you.” The plane was owned by the late, great Frank O’Kane”
who is your one is the red dress, front left, christ I’d die above on her
Who’s the baldy guy on the right wearing his house key as an earring? So practical and totes amazeballs as a fashion statement.
The Blacktie lad off Dragons Den I think?
Christ…
Christ, I’ve no time for Sinn Fein or their policies but I’d nearly vote for them for the mass hysteria and indignation it would generate in the Sindo were SF to get into government.
