Padraig Harrington emerged as the 2025 U.S. Senior Open Champion, adding yet another major title to his illustrious career
Welcome the champion of the 45th U.S. Senior Open and our two-time champion Padraig Harrington. Padraig, put that final round into words.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Into words, it was tension filled. All day it was tight and close. I was happy both Stewart and I got off to a good start. We made some birdies and got going.
It was quite important not to let the field back into it. Then we kind of hit the wall, which is kind of to be expected around that turn.
After that, I was nip and tuck with Stewart. I don’t watch leaderboards, so I think about through 13 holes I turned to my caddie and said, is anybody else in this? When he told me that Miguel was 9, that was worrying because he’s in a form that, if anybody is going to make some birdies, it’s Miguel.
I knew I was still ahead of Stewart and keeping an eye on him and trying to hit some nice shots through those back nine. Would have liked to hole one of the putts to get a two-shot lead. Stewart was obviously a little unlucky. He didn’t birdie 16 and 17 where he hit it in close.
Then on 18, I was coming down 18, I said to my caddie Ronan, I said, look, if I birdie this hole, I win. It takes all the permutations out of it. Ronan then said something to me, reminded me of something that Hale Irwin told me over the years. He said, always hit the shot you would hit if you’re one shot behind, and that kind of gave good clarity to what I was going to do.
Obviously if you’re one shot behind, you’d be hitting at that pin, you’ve got to take it on. That made the decision — I think it made the decision, but it gave me clarity to that decision that I was confident that I was doing the right thing.
Certainly there was a lot of relief with that second shot. We played it as adjusted at 138 meters. I hit a half pitching wedge. I knew it wouldn’t spin back because it was a half wedge. It skipped up there one bounce, stopped. It couldn’t have been close enough. What was it, six, seven feet. I would have struggled to two-putt from 40 feet, so I was very happy to have two to win from six feet.
Q. Talk about what it meant to have your family here this time too.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: It’s brilliant when you get to celebrate with your family, especially my wife is here and one of my kids is here. The other is watching from around the world.
But it’s really nice because, as much as I’ve won tournaments back in the day, I didn’t get to enjoy the experience with my kids. They were there for some of them, but they were only little. Now they understand it.
I suppose that’s another great thing about the Champions Tour and the Senior Tour. It gives us this opportunity to relive our past glories.
Q. You mentioned that yesterday about these kinds of battles with Stewart, the opportunity to relive that, and that’s why you still play. Is there anything now, as you kind of look back at your career, that you feel like you can do now that you couldn’t do back then in golf?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Things change. You’re always trying to improve. You’re always trying to get better. I don’t think there’s anything I could do now that I couldn’t have done when I was younger.
I would have done some things different when I was younger for sure. I don’t regret how I approached the game and the way I went about it. Certainly I now appreciate more how much effort it takes to play on a Sunday compared to every other day.
If you want to win tournaments, you’ve got to be exceptionally fresh and mentally fresh on Sunday. You’ve got to have the least amount of stress all the way you can during the week.
Literally, probably just because of the nature of it, I definitely make an effort to enjoy my tournaments more, enjoy what’s going on around them. It’s not all work. And having your family here is part of that.
When you finish up — like on Wednesday night, what’s Wednesday night? I went for an In-n-Out burger. Like I didn’t eat a french fry or a burger for 10, 15 years of my career. It was all about everything was get the right diet, all that sort of thing.
Like the start of the tournament, I actually had two double-doubles.
(Laughter).
You might think that’s not the best in terms of everything should be perfect, but at this stage of my career, I’ve got to enjoy my life out here.
Opportunities like that to — when you come from Ireland, you don’t get the opportunity to go for an In-n-Out burger too often, so that was a nice bonus.
I’m a more relaxed person. Still not relaxed, but more relaxed than I was as a younger player.
Q. You mentioned Hale Irwin gave you that advice. Do you know when? When would that have happened? When is that kind of advice?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Now you’re getting into detail. I think he probably gave me that advice about three years ago when I started on the Champions Tour. Maybe he was hoping I’d have a run to keep Bernhard at bay to keep him from passing his record.
But yeah, that advice, it’s a simple thing, and it’s always the perfect shot. One shot behind; what shot would you hit if you’re one shot behind? For every occasion it works perfectly.
Q. How appreciative are you of the whole, the Champions Tour, the senior majors, just because it’s so unique to golf? Just because other sports don’t have it.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: It’s unbelievable. We’re so much better together at this stage of our careers. Everybody is happier and friendlier. We’re not half as grumpy as we were when we were young guys.
I think, as you get older, you realize that you don’t actually have all the secrets and that you can actually tell everybody everything, and it’s up to them to figure it out too.
We’re much more relaxed than — we’re still competitive when we’re on the golf course. We want to play great golf, but I think the environment around the Champions Tour is really nice.
Most of us would have burnt out in golf. You put so much into your golfing career, you burn out. Usually you last about 20 years is the burn-out period, 15 to 20 years. The Champions Tour is a new lease on life.
The only way you can kind of do it is do it with a different attitude and a new attitude. As I said, it’s about, I suppose, enjoying your past glories now and reliving them.
Q. Stewart had a couple of five-, six-footers there on 16 and 17. As the guy who’s playing him, what’s the feeling there as you’re watching it? Especially knowing that the Broadmoor, it’s not automatic.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I’d missed the putts on 13, 14, 15. I missed some good chances. I thought I was going to pay for it. When Stewart was back to the wall, when I pushed him into it, he hit two great shots on 16 and 17 in there close.
Nothing’s given out here for sure, and nothing is that comfortable for all us guys on the Champions Tour. He looked like he hit pretty decent putts. Especially it looked like he hit a very good putt on 16, looked like it was going in.
I think, with what we’ve seen recently with JJ Spaun getting a great read on the 72nd hole and then Tommy Fleetwood giving a great read to Keegan Bradley, I was looking at Mark Hensby gave a great read to Stewart on 17, as his ball came down and it broke, but as it turned out, it actually messed him up because Stewart is coming up the hill, and if anything, it went to the right. So, yeah, that’s just how lucky I am. Those two guys — it was a bad break for Stewart, as it turned out.
Q. Did the kind of hurry-up pace regarding that they instituted today because of the weather and yesterday affect you at all today? Was it in your mind at all?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: We were looking at that cloud all day. There’s no doubt about it. It came in early, and we’re looking at it. Because I was going well myself and Stewart were 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.
Yeah, I really was very conscious, I was hoping — and I don’t have any control over the weather, but I was hoping that it would stay away and we’d get it done as they blew the hooter as I was out there and now coming back in. It was important to get it done.
You know, if somebody was playing badly, they’d probably be happy for a rain delay to get a restart, but in our case, it was nice that we got through it. I think it was there all day, but it looked — certainly with three or four holes to go, we really did feel like we were going to get home.
Q. You mentioned momentum right there. That birdie yesterday on 18, do you believe that that played into any momentum going into today and that helped you kind of get ready for today’s round?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: When I looked at it, it was a three-shot swing — it could have been a three-shot swing. Mark and Stewart looked like they were going to make birdie to go to 9-under. Mine was going to go by.
As it turned out, could have gone by five, six feet. I didn’t feel good on the greens yesterday, I was having a really tough day. I could have ended up 6-under to 9-under. It did change things.
I got into the last group, I slept soundly last night. I was in a nice place going to bed last night. So, yeah, I do believe that momentum definitely holds true in a whole tournament when you’re getting breaks. You never realize in a tournament, sometimes it’s avoiding bad breaks. It’s not always getting obvious good breaks. It’s sometimes you could hit — you might hit a bad shot into a green, and it’s 15 feet underneath the pin, and not realize that everybody who hit a good shot actually bounced past the hole and ended up three-putting.
There’s a lot of that going on, but certainly it could break like that on 18. Just getting the cheer of the crowd, that just helps. I got a big, big cheer. There was a huge crowd on 18 yesterday. For sure, it was a big boost. It looked like it did carry into today.
Q. You said this was your first time at the Broadmoor. Just as you leave this course, your overall thoughts on the difficulty of the greens and the rough?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: It’s been a great week here. Everything about the facilities have been great. The golf course itself, I think everybody talks about the altitude and then the elevation changes on the course, but you’ve got to play the course kind of backwards here.
The greens are as tough, as treacherous as we’d ever see, and you’ve got to know where you’re hitting your tee shots to approach these greens and then you’ve got to know exactly where you’re going to hit your second shots if you can and keep the ball under the hole.
Sometimes you’ve even got to make sure that you — sometimes playing safe is not the right option. There’s a lot of thinking going on. I suppose the biggest thing you have to do with the yardages and the pin positions is whatever you choose, you’ve got to commit to it and feel like you have made the best decision.
Q. As a guy who’s won three regular majors and a previous U.S. Senior Open, put into perspective what this one means to you?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Winning, it’s all bout winning. Every time you come back out and you win, the nerves are there, the tension’s there, you don’t want to mess up. So, yeah, it’s very exciting to come out here and win, but I think what 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.
Genuinely, I know I’ve said this, but you are reliving the past glories. You’re hitting shots and you’re waving at the crowds. The people come out because they know you from the past. The amount of people that will come and say they were at my majors, they watched my majors, or maybe they started playing golf because of the major wins that I’ve had.
I also get the grown man who come up to me who tells me I gave them my golf ball when they were a kid. I get that a lot as well. They could have full beard, everything. But that’s what we’re here for. It really does. I think the Champions Tour consistently delivers great drama Sunday afternoon, household names that we’re familiar with.
The fact that we’re not all perfect out here, we have many demons out here on the Champions Tour. Everybody’s dealing with something. They’re not happy chipping. They’re not happy putting. There’s a lot going on in our heads out here.
In many ways, we’re actually more human as well. We’re more relatable because we can certainly mess up.
Q. You said earlier this week this was the first time you’d come to Colorado. Did you have expectations any different than a normal tournament?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: The expectations, everybody talks about the altitude all the time. So we were aware of that. I played a lot at altitude over the years in different countries, so that wasn’t going to be a big deal.
I just really enjoyed the experience here at the Broadmoor. Right from the start, you’d be surprised, you stay in a nice hotel; sometimes we stay in a very average place because it’s near the thing. Here we’re staying in a beautiful hotel. It just settles you down for the week. Everything about it, being on site, which made it very easy, it just was a very nice, comfortable week.
Look, I’m here working this week. I think there’s nobody that wouldn’t come here on a holiday, would they?
Q. Miguel had a pretty crazy run today. Were you scoreboard watching at all?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I don’t scoreboard watch. Especially as myself and Stewart were going well, I didn’t need to scoreboard watch. I knew it was between me and him. When we stalled up on the back nine, which often happens, we kind of hit a wall.
So on 13 I did ask my caddie, is it just me and Stewart, or is there anybody else here?
I was worried that if there’s somebody else there, I’d have to go after it a bit more; whereas if you’re one ahead, you’re hitting the shots like you’re one shot behind. You should always hit that anyway.
I was just a little bit worried. I didn’t know he got to 10 because I don’t watch scoreboards. I knew he got to 9. I was worried about Miguel because good things are happening to Miguel at the moment. He birdied the last two last week to get into a playoff. He’s in that frame of mind to do crazy things.
Yeah, it was a little bit in the back of my head, but I didn’t hear big cheers coming home. So I was kind of — I only checked again — I probably checked on — I think I only checked on the 18th that Miguel hadn’t — wasn’t in it, it was just myself and Stewart. Up to that, I was quite comfortable that I needed.
I was trying to make birdies on those holes coming in, but I wasn’t panicking, even though, as I said, Miguel is having a great run. He’s doing crazy things. So he would be a danger.
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