PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — European Ryder Cup captain Padraig Harrington tested positive for COVID-19 on the Monday of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
That meant an automatic 10-day quarantine, which he did at The Lodge overlooking the first tee of the Pebble Beach Golf Links.
“There are worst places to be than in The Lodge and looking out on the first tee at Pebble Beach and catching up on my Netflix. I did the whole two seasons of Mindhunter. Eighteen hours I got through. It’s excellent. I’m texting people about the Ryder Cup,” he told Golfweek‘s Steve DiMeglio a few days into his quarantine.
While that 10-day period ended on Thursday, he was actually allowed to leave Pebble Beach by car on Wednesday so he drove overnight to Riviera Country Club for this week’s Genesis Invitational.
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“I got here in the morning, so I got a couple hours’ sleep here and that was it,” he said on Thursday after his first round. “It wasn’t too bad a drive, I’ve got to say, but yeah, it was not a stress at all, the sleep I had last week. The only thing I was worried about was by 3 in the afternoon is my naptime.”
He had a 12:38 p.m. local time tee time on Thursday and then went out and shot a 4-over 75, which included a stretch of five bogeys over seven holes on his front nine.
“I was really struggling with the short game,” he said. “I was very happy with how I hit the ball. Really happy actually how I hit the ball. I had a lot of sort of putts from the fringe and I just was not trusting that confidence. I had several three-putts from the fringe of the greens.”
During his 10-day quarantine, he says he tried to work on his game. Well, as much as one can do in a hotel room.
“I putted plenty on the carpet in the room. That didn’t do me any good, did it?” he said. He also managed to work on his swing, using whatever he had at his disposal.
“I used an impact bag in terms of my pillow was an impact bag. So yeah, I did plenty of swinging.”
And like many others, he had plenty of virtual meetings.
“Lots of meetings by the end of it,” he said. “Loads of Zoom stuff the last couple of days when I started feeling better. Basically the first week I really took it easy and did nothing, didn’t do many swings, practice, anything like that just to be sure. Then once it came to the end of the weekend, I suppose, I started swinging again and getting into it. As I said, physically I was fine.
“Today I was happy that I wasn’t tired or anything out there, but I did struggle on those greens. They’re tough greens, to be honest. A lot of stress even if you’re in the whole of your health out there.”
Whether he makes the cut at Riviera or not, Harrington, 49, says he’s just going to keep on playing tournament golf. He confirmed he’s entered the opposite-field event next week at the Puerto Rico Open and in five weeks he’ll play the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship in the Dominican Republic.
With the quarantine and the overnight five-hour drive down the coast and no prep for Riviera, did he consider withdrawing instead?
“No,” he said without hesitation. “I can’t go home. I can’t go home without a negative PCR, so I don’t have any option but to keep on going. Even if I wanted to stop, I have nowhere to go and kind of in limbo at the moment with that. Hopefully I’ll get a negative test the next few weeks, but it could be a couple of months before I get a negative test, which would allow me to travel back to Ireland.”
So onward he goes.
“I’m actually entering more events. … Yeah, adding tournaments rather than anything else because, as I said, I think that’s the only place I can go.”
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