When they first started keeping score at golf tournaments and began awarding perpetual items such as claret jugs and Wannamaker trophies, there was one tried-and-true formula for a golfer to reach the top of the game. He initially started out in the caddie yard. A caddie carried the golf bag for someone else and as he became more knowledgeable he could assist with club selection, read greens and give advice. By then he was hooked on the game and began skipping classes to get in an extra nine holes.
A promotion to the pro shop as an assistant was the next step. There he learned to change grips, repair clubs and attempt to fix the swings of the club’s members. He learned the game on his own, entered local and regional events for aspiring professionals and adapted to the rough-and-tumble lifestyle of professional golf.
That was the route taken by Harry Vardon, Walter Hagen, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan as well as their professional contemporaries. Every now and then amateurs such as Francis Ouimet, Chick Evans or Bobby Jones would compete equally with the pros, but they were a different breed as they returned to their law firms and engineering jobs.
Every golfer who made a living at professional golf from the commencement of the United States Open in 1895 to the conclusion of World War II in 1945 took the same route from the caddie yard to the pro shop to the tour. It was basically a rite of passage.
Things changed in America as the country got past the Depression and World War II, and the same was true in professional golf. Most tour regulars seemed to have college backgrounds. Arnold Palmer attended Wake Forest, Johnny Pott went to LSU, and Jack Nicklaus was at Ohio State. Junior golf took on a national appeal as Johnny Miller won both the U.S. Junior and then the U.S. Open, some nine years apart, while playing golf at the Olympic Club and attending BYU. Most importantly, there was television. There was corporate money and advertising revenue.
Professional golf became more lucrative. The pros of this modern era had impressive junior golf backgrounds, played college golf and may have even attended a golf academy instead of a traditional high school. The formula had changed from the caddie yard to the college team.
Of course, there are exceptions to how one gets to the pantheon of professional golf and last weekend’s winners’ circles in Kuala Lampur and Portugal are two glaring cases in point. Last Sunday, Ireland’s Padraig Harrington captured the Portugal Masters, an event on the European Tour. Several time zones away in Malaysia, American Justin Thomas was defending his title in the CIMB Classic. Believe it or not, the CIMB is a PGA Tour event as is this week’s World Golf Championships tourney in China.
There is very little in common between Harrington and Thomas. Harrington is 45 years old. Thomas is almost half his age, a 23-year-old. It was Thomas’ second victory on the PGA Tour and it was Harrington’s 31st worldwide win. He has won 15 times on the European Tour and six times on the PGA Tour, including three major championships. Padraig won back-to-back majors in 2009 at the British Open and the PGA Championship. The only others to do so since the turn of the century are named Tiger, Rory and Jordan.
Harrington is a late bloomer who is still playing at a high level while Thomas has been in the national golfing spotlight since he was 16. Harrington’s journey is quite different from Thomas’ familiar path.
Padraig Harrington has taken one of the more unique journeys to the top of the world of men’s professional golf. He was a decent amateur golfer who didn’t think he was good enough to compete against the pros. He went to college, got an accounting degree, studied and took all the classes to get the Irish equivalent of a CPA, and the worked for a firm. He was a weekend amateur golfer who was winning tournaments such as the West of Ireland Amateur and playing for Great Britain and Ireland on the 1995 Walker Cup team. He was a 24-year-old.
Harrington finally decided to give professional golf a try the following year. He won his 10th professional start, capturing the 1996 Spanish Open. Yet it was four long years until he won again, taking home the 2000 Brazil Open. He started playing both the European and the American PGA Tours when he was 34 years old in 2005. Harrington had his breakthrough moment in 2007 when he won the British Open in overtime against Sergio Garcia at Carnoustie. He defended his Open title the following year and won the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills three weeks later, once again over Garcia as well as Ben Curtis. Padraig was the first Euro to win the PGA since Tommy Armour did so in 1930. Harrington was 37 years old.
The following year, 16-year-old high school sophomore Justin Thomas surprised the golfing world by making the cut at the PGA Tour’s 2009 Wyndham Championship (Greater Greensboro Open). A highly recruited junior golfer, Thomas went to the University of Alabama where he won six times in two years. As a 20-year-old, he was on the winning NCAA Division I golf team as well as the victorious 2013 Walker Cup team. He turned pro in 2014, won during his rookie year on the Nationwide Tour, and finished fifth on that circuit’s money list, earning a promotion onto the PGA Tour for the wraparound 2014-15 season.
Justin’s rookie season was a success as he came in 32nd on the PGA Tour money list, mainly because of an impressive seven top-10 finishes. Last year at this time he won his first PGA Tour event at the start of the 2015-16 season, finding victory lane at TPC Kuala Lampur. Thomas was in a very intense battle during the course of the final nine holes and ended up prevailing by one stroke over former Masters champ Adam Scott. Thomas jumped into the lead at the CIMB with a second-round 61, faltered over the final nine with a double bogey on the 14th hole, and hung in there by making a 6-footer on the 18th hole to pull off his first tour victory. Thomas was 22 years old at the time of his initial PGA Tour triumph.
Last weekend Thomas repeated the feat and won again in Malaysia. He is now just 23 years old and while he is three majors and 29 professional wins behind Padraig Harrington, he has a head start on the Irishman as far as career milestones. Someday he may match him. And I find that most interesting when you consider the differing paths both men have taken.
