Allowed this time to look after itself with the help of an ever-present, albeit gentle, breeze, Carnoustie offered one of the best Open Championships in living memory, and one that will still be celebrated in Ireland long after Padraig Harrington has left for the great links in the sky. Sixty years after Fred Daly won the Open at Hoylake, the Emerald Isle has its long-awaited second Claret Jug and one which will no doubt need a thorough cleaning before heading to Royal Birkdale next year, in order to get rid of all the Guinness stains.

For Harrington, the moment is long overdue. An ungainly swinger of the club and considerably less gifted than a number of his peers, he has nevertheless ranked among the world’s top dozen or so players for most of this century thanks to a work ethic that would impress Vijay Singh and a desire to succeed that only Tiger Woods might call moderate.

It’s fitting perhaps that Carnoustie should be the scene of his first major triumph. Itself slightly ungainly and often overlooked in discussions of the world’s best courses, it has worked hard in recent years to re-establish its reputation after the nightmare of 1999.

Long, superbly designed, and exposed to numbing North Sea winds, Carnoustie needed the forest of rough it got for protection in ’99 like Fort Knox needs another padlock. Reaction to what happened eight years ago was probably over the top, but how much better it was to see a handful of world-class golfers chasing birdies around a course that certainly proved testing, but not overwhelming. In ’99, the object was to shoot the least high number and get to the safety of the clubhouse without humiliating yourself or even crying in your mother’s arms. Whereas this year, players had the chance, at least, to go low. And how ironic that Sergio Garcia, the man, or rather boy, who shot plus-30 for two rounds in ’99 and then sought solace from his mommy, should go lower than anyone except, of course, for Harrington.

That Garcia overcame the fear and trepidation he must surely have felt on the first tee on Thursday morning, fired 277 (-7) for four rounds and got into a playoff says a lot about his character. That he shot a two-over par 73 yesterday and lost the three-shot lead he had started the day with, unfortunately says more about his apparent failure to close tournaments (12 top 10 finishes since he last won in June 2005). And the “woe-is-me” schoolboy remarks after his round yesterday, in which he suggested that he is the unluckiest player in the world because when some guys hit the pin (like he did at the 16th) the ball ends up a foot away but his ball “goes 20 feet away” (like that never happened to anyone else), showed that although he may be stronger mentally than he was eight years ago, he still retains an edge of petulance that will probably never disappear altogether but which might have to if he is to ever grind out a major victory.

He has reached the point in his career where he desperately needs to win one of these things. For two, maybe three, years he has suffered the same question about whether he’s ready to win a major, and with a good lead and no Tiger Woods in sight, yesterday was a gilt-edged chance to get the press off his back. After the commiseration and sympathy have cleared, the 27-year-old Spaniard will no doubt tire of that line of questioning once again. He should be encouraged by his usual stellar ballstriking (307.9 yard average off the tee, 71.6% of fairways hit, and nearly 71% of greens in regulation) and the obvious improvement the belly putter has made to his work on the greens (25 single putt greens for the week and not a single three-putt) but Southern Hills and the PGA Championship probably can’t come soon enough for him.

Nor can it for Woods whose tie for 12th will not excite him terribly. Unable to get the ball close enough to the flag to take advantage of a putting stroke he felt was sound all week, the world no. 1 didn’t swing the club nearly as well as he did at Hoylake last year or in the third round at Oakmont last month, when he hit a miraculous 17 of the 18 greens in regulation. His moments of truly good form have been sporadic so far this season and he will likely complete a majorless year unless he can recapture the consistency that has made him so dominant.

Garcia, Woods, Andres Romero, who was birdying his way to victory until he hit a ghastly 2-iron out of the rough at the 71st hole and made six, and possibly Gary Player, who somewhat bizarrely brought up the subject of drugs on Thursday morning but didn’t back his comments up with any names, should consider themselves the biggest losers of this championship. The winners were just as numerous: the R&A who wised up and let the course defend itself; the Irish who will be taking to the streets like Argentineans did after Angel Cabrera’s win at Oakmont; Carnoustie, which once again proved itself a giant among courses, and, of course, Harrington.

It’s typical after a player like Harrington has removed the major monkey from his back for the world to start speculating over how many more he can now win. It’s probably safe to say, given the joy and obvious sense of relief he displayed upon winning, that if Padraig Harrington never wins another tournament in his life, let alone a major, he really couldn’t care less.

tonydear71@comcast.net