By Travis Gillmore
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Padraig Harrington bested Stewart Cink by one shot on June 29 in the final round of the 45th U.S. Senior Open in a dramatic finish that came down to the wire, with the lead changing hands repeatedly throughout the day.
“It’s all about winning,” Harrington told reporters after he claimed his 10th Champions Tour victory.
“Every time you come back out and you win, the nerves are there, the tension’s there, you don’t want to mess up. But I think winning a U.S. Senior Open or any tournament on the Champions Tour, it kind of validates your career. It validates the past in a lot of ways.”
The win places the Irishman on a short list of golfers with at least two Senior U.S. Open titles, including Miller Barber, who won three; Jack Nicklaus; Gary Player; Hale Irwin; Bernhard Langer; and two others.
Harrington has 16 tour victories, including two Open Championships and a PGA Championship, and he’s topped the leaderboard 20 times internationally.
He began the day tied for the lead with playing partners Cink, an American, and Australia’s Mark Hensby.
Hensby bogeyed the first and fifth holes, shooting a 73 to end in a five-under par tied with Denmark’s Thomas Bjørn for fourth place.
“I’m going to be honest, today I just got off to a bad start,” Hensby, who finished third three years ago when Harrington claimed his first Senior Open victory, told reporters after the round.
“We just hit a few clubs that probably weren’t the right clubs and hit it in some bad spots where it’s hard to two-putt. Just couldn’t get any momentum going. Just couldn’t get the putter right today.”
Cink continued his Champions Tour success, with 20 top-10 finishes in his first 26 starts.
Two birdie putts that slid by the cup on the back nine on Sunday left him one short of the leader with a two-under 68 to end at 10-under.
“Those are two putts where the break on the green is going against that mountain,” Cink told reporters.
“There’s not a lot on this course that goes against that mountain. You have to decide which one’s going to win out. You can feel it in your feet and you can see where the mountain is and you know where the valley is. It’s just really, really hard to commit.”
Multiple players and caddies told The Epoch Times that the greens were incredibly difficult to read and judge the speed, which grew faster as the week went on.
Harrington carded a three-under-par 67 to finish the week at 11-under.
The 53-year-old parred the final seven holes, firing his iron shot to slightly more than seven feet from the 18th flagstick
Two putts later, he clinched the win and celebrated with his wife, Caroline, and 17-year-old son, Ciaran, who joined him on the green.
Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez, last week’s champion and four-time winner this year, shot the best round of the tournament, a 6-under 64 to charge up the leaderboard. He finished nine under par in third place.
Jimenez found a bunker on the 15th green and managed to save par, but dropped a shot with a bogey on the final hole to land him two shots back.
Play started two hours earlier than originally planned for the fourth and final round due to ominous rainclouds that hovered in the nearby mountain peaks.
“We were looking at that cloud all day there’s no doubt about it,” Harrington said. “Because I was going well myself and Stewart was going well, you actually never want to stop when you’re going well. You don’t want to lose that momentum and have to restart.”
Dangerous weather caused multiple delays during the tournament, with horns blowing on each of the first three days to halt play until lightning passed. The sirens sounded again on Sunday, about 20 minutes after the last players had finished.
The historic Broadmoor Golf Club, located at The Broadmoor Resort, a five-star hotel dating back to 1918, hosted the tournament on its East Course.
The 18-hole layout blends Donald Ross’s original design with a 1948 renovation by Robert Trent Jones Sr.
Only 12 golfers finished the week under par.
