AMGEN IRISH OPEN

September 9, 2026

Padraig Harrington

Trump International Golf Links & Hotel

Press Conference

JAY AGGARWAL: Pádraig, you'll be making your 31st consecutive appearance in your National Open this week, and writing yourself into the history books. How proud are you of that achievement?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: I'm somewhat surprised because obviously I started pretty late. You know, you see young lads playing now at 15 years of age in their National Opens at times. I played my first one when I was 24.

So, yeah, 31 years consecutive, it's a nice run. It says, I'd like to tell you I never got injured but I think I played a few while injured.

Been brilliant. 31 years. Has anyone played 31 or is it the record?

JAY AGGARWAL: 31 consecutive. You have the proud.

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, proud of that. I'd like to say never been injured, but that's not the case. 31 in a row, who held the previous?

JAY AGGARWAL: Seve, Spanish Open.

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: Wow, I just thought it was The Irish Open. So of all opens, the No. 1? Gee, whiz. And I still think I can win it.

Q. What's your favourite thing about this event?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: Definitely the atmosphere, the fans. I struggled at the start with that. It was a lot of stress and just put a lot of pressure on you. I think it takes awhile for you to figure out that everybody wanting you to do well is not them expecting to you do well and once you get a handle on the fact that it's just a genuine hope that you do well -- like it always felt like you were letting them down back in the day if you didn't hit a perfect shot. Took a while before I got comfortable with that and I do enjoy that now with the atmosphere, the fans.

I like the fact that the European players who come over loved the atmosphere, love the actual event. They questioned our weather at times, but everybody enjoys the event.

Amgen have come in and really upped the game of The Irish Open. It's one of the premiere events on The European Tour. The players love it. They appreciate it. And to be honest, I take everything personal during the week.

If I see something out, I go, you know what, that's not quite right, let's get that fixed. I do take -- as I think all the Irish players, we take a little bit of ownership.

So if we hear somebody, you know, toast was overdone or whatever it is, we're interested to see what everything is, and we want the best possible experience. I think we all take a little bit of ownership, and it's nice that with a sponsor like Amgen that it can be as big a tournament in Europe as it is.

It's a pretty competitive world in golf tournaments now. There's a lot of choices for players. As you can see with the field this week, those players that can choose have come here.

Q. I read that you played Greg Norman to mark the opening of Doonbeg?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: Yes, I'm looking over and you probably weren't here to watch it. I have general memories of it. I remember Greg it kind of finished his career at that stage, and I was coming in thinking I was going to have a pretty soft match and I couldn't believe how into it and competitive he was. He obviously won the match on the day.

So that was nice to see him, you know, really into his golf. By the time I would have played a little bit at the end of my career with Greg, or at the end of his career, but it was kind of waning, his love of competitive golf.

But that day, he was competitive, and he showed his game and it was -- all guys want to see their predecessors, the greats, they want to see them at their prime. They want to see them at their best and certainly on that day, I got to see Greg Norman at his absolute best because he was interested, focused, and really wanted to show off on his course.

Q. There's a clip of that, not quite in black and white but hard to believe it's 24 years ago. How has this course and developed and changed over that period, and what test will it provide this week?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: It was interesting, Buddy Darby, Kiawah Island, they are the guys who developed it with Greg. You know, if I designed the golf course, I would have never got another job again because it was so crazy and funky but it was brilliant for a links golf course.

It was exactly -- if you were going to design a links golf course that was never going to host a tournament but people were going to come and play, it was perfect. It was really quickie, crazy things, crisscrossing holes, bunkers and grains, you could be on the green and couldn't see the pin. Like really mad stuff. Which that's kind of how you imagine a links golf course a hundred years ago was.

Obviously since then, and especially since Trump has taken over the ownership, it's turned it into a tournament golf course. It's softened up a lot of things and brought things into being a bit -- I suppose you would use the word fairer but certainly more standardised in competitive golf because you know, the course that we played in 2002, that was crazy. Brilliant crazy, but like as I said it was fun. Somewhere you'd like to go and play with your mates but you couldn't have played a championship tournament on it, and certainly this one now is very -- compared to the old one, it's just completely toned down, softened down, and very pleasant to play.

Q. Just going back to that Irish Open breakthrough in 2007, how important was that in you moving forward and achieving what you did?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: I said it at the time, and most players now will follow suit, that the four majors are the biggest thing in golf. But everybody, your National Open is your fifth major, and I would have felt that at the time, as I was talking about earlier, how much at an Irish Open I felt more pressure, much more pressure at an Irish Open than a major. The stress, all the way through the week, everything was stressful.

So winning in 2007 was a big step in how to manage a big tournament week, how to handle the pressure from Monday morning onwards, how to deal with all that sort of stuff and get your head in the game.

Yeah, it was a massive step, and I've been quite lucky in my career, all the way through my career, I seem to have managed to win at the next level, the next step, and The Irish Open was very much that, making me feel comfortable in a pressure-filled environment that I was desperate to try and win in, and doing that only solidifies your confidence for going out in a major.

I can guarantee you, I felt the same way trying to win an Irish Open as trying to win a major. It definitely brought a lot of self-confidence being able to do that because of the -- you know, you turn up at an Irish Open from Monday morning onwards, it's like you're leading a tournament going into Sunday: The expectation, the talk, the questions. You can win a tournament and nobody would know you were there until late Sunday afternoon, sort of thing, not when it's your National Open. Like I said a lot going on. You can't have a perfectly organised week. You have to swing with the punches, and that's what you learn after a while.

I think earlier in my career, I fought against that. I tried to do -- I tried to treat them like regular events but that's not what they are. Your National Open is different. You have to acknowledge it and actually accept it that, you know, there's a lot of different things going on.

Q. When you won The Irish Open 19 years ago, whatever it was, you were coming in on the back of a couple of wins, you had won the Dunhill the year before, beaten Tiger and you had been taking your chances. What's it like for a player when they are maybe not taking the chances that they have and gone through a bit of a lull?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: It's a leading question.

Q. Well, yeah, Shane is obviously going through that period at the moment.

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: Well, the thing with Shane, because I play quite a bit of golf with Shane, Shane has been playing great and not getting the results. Like for him not to win in Dubai at the start of the year, you cannot as a player looking on, I cannot tell you how unlucky, circumstantial, that bogey at the last was. Like for his tee shot to fall off the fairway into the first cut, dust, and no room at the back of the green for it to fall, that happens in golf. You can go on runs of things going against you.

And it is tough for Shane because you never want to be playing well, you know, and not getting the results. It's tough when you're not playing well and not getting the results, but Shane has been playing -- he's taken the money off me every day this year, I'd say.

He's playing beautiful golf. It's hard to stay patient, and he has to. It's hard not to get frustrated. You know, it is very much professional golf, and he could go on a run where he doesn't play very well, and get a couple of wins and just a couple of things happen at the right time. We just never really know with golf. You've just got to stick at it.

In my own experience, you know, I think I've counted up, at this stage, I've just about surpassed wins to second place in my career, so somewhere along the lines, like about -- I've lost count, I'm at 44 wins and 42 second places.

So some of those second places I messed up. Some of them, I definitely, you know, did the wrong stuff. Sometimes I played well and finished second. Sometimes somebody else played well and beat me fair and square.

So it's -- you just have to keep your head in there all the time. Just keep doing and keep playing. It's very easy to say it; hard to do it. Hard to stay patient.

Definitely, for me, from the outside, he's a much better golfer. He's the best golfer I've seen, version of him I've seen, this year, all the way through his game. He's really very, very comfortable with his game and what he's doing, and the best version I've seen of him.

So, yes, he has to stay patient and hope that he gets that run. But you just don't know when it's happening, and all golfers go through it where they feel like they are not getting the rewards for the good work. It's a crazy game.

And the other side of it, you could be playing terrible and feeling sorry for yourself. It's just this is the nature of our game. The wins don't happen anywhere near as often as you think you are going to get them, so when they happen, you'd better enjoy them.

Q. On yourself, Monday in the rain hitting golf balls, Pete Cowen sitting on your new shoes; you never seem to lose the enthusiasm. Where do you find that?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: Well, I really love golf. I love everything about it. Yeah, I've certainly gone through that phase, you know, I kind of believe most professional golf careers, certainly up to my era, don't know about the young guys because some of them come through so young, take that eight, ten years to peak, about 15 years, you're burnt out and the last five years, you're on a slippery slope.

People don't notice but you have a 20-year career, and I matched that exactly. I got my late win after 20 years. I won in 2015, 2016. But the game was really hard for me, really, I was trying so hard. I was going out there. Shooting 72, 73, coming in, sitting with young lads at lunch and wondering, Should I be there? I was very much burnt out.

At the time, I missed out on the FedExCup and came back and played in Europe and played with -- there's Irish guys were playing on tour at the time, and this is one of the things, having not just friend on tour but friends with similar backgrounds. I went back to Europe. I played in Prague. I played in Hamburg, Crans Montana, Amsterdam and London. Peter Lawrie, Damien McGrane was there, and every night we went out for dinner. And after five weeks, I said, what's not to like about golf, these great cities, these great places? So why is this so hard?

It was an eye-opener for me that I really, really love golf. I really enjoy it. There's some stuff I just couldn't keep the pace up of a young man. Even though you see me there on Monday, I have dialed it back a bit. I have realised I can't do as much as I would have done years ago. I'm much more relaxed.

The simple answer to that is that if somebody 20 years ago -- when I was a rookie that came out on tour, Des Smyth was on tour and there was 15 Irish guys. Des would round up players in the evening to go for dinner. And if you were grumpy and decided you were going to stay in your room because you had a back round, he would go and knock on your door and get you out. He wouldn't allow players -- literally, Des was "Dad" and I have turned into Dad. But Des was Dad, and he would get the guys out and make guys get away from that environment of sitting in the room sulking.

Maybe after ten years, you know, when I'm sort of peaking in my career, I explain it to people like this. If somebody came along and says, if the lads came along and said we're going for dinner at 8 o'clock, I'd have gone, you know what guys, I've got to get in the gym at 6.00. I don't finish practicing at 6.00, I don't get in the gym and I've got to squeeze a quick dinner in and go for physio, so no dinner or not with the lads.

Whereas now, if somebody said we're going to 8 o'clock, great. I'd change my plans. Doesn't mean I don't go to the gym or don't do physio. I still practice, and I certainly still need to go to the gym. I still need to do physio. But my list of priorities, my No. 1 priority at tournaments is to enjoy myself. Know, Ronan will tell you at times that he has to remind me of that but my No. 1 priority is to enjoy the lifestyle, and that helps me play better golf.

So that's how I have always loved the game and everything with it, I love the rules of the game, and I am a golfing nerd. I'm very happy to, at 55 years of age, to realise that I am and I do accept it. I do absolutely accept the fact that I love this game. I'm very comfortable with that and I just love going out and competing as well.

Q. The video come out this week of you attempting the 500 shots at hole-in-one at The K Club. How disappointed were you leaving the property that day?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: I cannot believe I did not have a hole-in-one. 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.

Q. Did you underestimate the mental --

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: I don't know the odds on it. I worked it out. There was periods you had to remind yourself, you could really get into it. I took five hours and I had a 20-minute break where there's two groups -- we had to let two groups played through. 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.

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.

By the way, that was 500 shots with one practice swing on most shots, okay. Very rarely did I take none and very rarely did I take more than one practice swing.

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. 500 balls. Five solid hours with one 20-minute break. So you can't do more than a hundred 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 3 or 4 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.

Q. Just on the tournament again, it's not a normal week this week given the choice of venue, the likely presence of the U.S. President. What's your views? Is it a normal tournament as far as you guys are concerned?

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: For the players, every player here, is absolutely a hundred percent focused on trying to play their best golf.

Three there's a lot of different stories for the players. Some guys trying to get into the Ryder Cup Team. Some guys trying to keep their cards. Players are very good at just managing -- because we travel all around the world. There's always stuff going on. You know, it is a huge deal, sitting U.S. President coming in. I've met both Bushes. Played golf with Bill Clinton, that was really cool. I've met Obama, obviously, at the White House for the St. Patrick's Day. I met President Trump back in the day before he was President.

It is a huge deal that U.S. Presidents, there's going to be huge focus. The place looks fantastic. It looks brilliant. There's a lot of attention and some of that attention is good and bad attention, there's no doubt about it.

A golfer's perspective, you know what, and probably that's kind of my side of things, President Trump does a really good job on golf courses. It's in good condition. Nice changes, very good course, very enjoyable, very playable. What he's done for the people in the area and the economy in the area, from a golfing perspective, it's a no-brainer the attention it brings.

Obviously politically, there's a different side to this, and it's exceptionally complicated. I play my golf in the U.S. and it's exceptionally complicated in the U.S., let alone coming over here.

You know, everybody -- there's a lot of opinions. My friends will be on both sides of the counter. You know, so it's always -- it's very topical and a difficult one because as I said, I have good friends who are both sides and they are still good friends.

So it's much easier from a golfing perspective. He does a really good golf course and a really good venue. The attention, as I said, for this tournament, it's putting all eyes here, and the people at Doonbeg, it's going to make this venue a bigger place. The jobs and economy, they are going to do great.

He does a good golf course. The political side is certainly a hot potato for when you discuss it. As I said, I have friends on both sides of that thing all around the world. So it's one of those conversations that it certainly brings up a lot of passion.

For us at the moment, we are very much focused on the golf, sticking to the golf, and the players are exceptionally happy with what they are seeing out there at the moment.