Padraig Harrington had lost his status on the PGA Tour. It would be a struggle to regain that status, slugging it out for sponsor's invitations and getting lousy tee times that a guy who has won three majors hadn't been dealt in years.
It had gotten so bad, in fact, that Harrington said he considered dropping his quest to get back to full status on the PGA Tour and wade in the baby pool that is the Asian Tour.
"I was thinking, because of my success in Asia, that maybe I'd be better off back in a small pond for a while and build the confidence up, which is a big part of the game," Harrington said to RTE.ie.
"The U.S. tour is a big tough field every week. It feels like a sprint. It's a big charge, everybody runs out there and if you don't get hot, you're not going to win. So there were certainly times when I was considering 'Am I doing the right thing here? Should I step away from the tour in the U.S. and go a place where I can build my confidence back up on the golf course?'"
Before his win at The Honda Classic, Harrington's last PGA Tour win was the 2008 PGA Championship. However, Harrington had a pair of Asian Tour wins, one in 2012 and another in 2014, that helped keep him going as a pro.
Now that he's a PGA Tour winner again, he has that confidence he was lacking. In fact, it's soaring -- especially since he became the first guy in more than a decade to win a Tour stop with at least two final-round double bogeys (Vaughn Taylor, 2004 Valspar Championship).
"Most people would think if I hit it out of bounds or have a double-bogey in the last round I can't win. I know I can," Harrington said. "All that proves to me going forward is I shouldn't be of fearful of danger. We over-estimate how much damage these things can do in a round of golf."
