The reason for Padraig Harrington's Seniors demons as he relives US Open glory
Irish star topped the pile in Colorado and opned up life with his peers
Proud Padraig Harrington reckons it's a joy to relive past glories on the Seniors circuit.
And the Irish star reckons it's as much about conquering demons as displaying quality for the older boys after he scooped a second US Open title.
Harrington won three Majors during his earlier career and has now collected two more since switching to the over-50s scene.
The former Ryder Cup captain is savouring life amongst the older statesman and the opportunity to roll back time to the days when he won back-to-back Open Championships in 2007 and 2008, as well as a PGA Championship.
Harrington explained: 'I think winning a US 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, 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.
'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.
'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.
'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. It gives us this opportunity to relive our past glories.
'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.
'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.
'Like on 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.
'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 realise 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. We're still competitive when we're on the 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 with a different and new attitude. As I said, it's about, I suppose, enjoying your past glories now and reliving them.'
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