Triple Major winning Padraig Harrington is intenting to pump up the volume in 2013 by teeing up for a first time in the noisest tournament in golf – the Waste Management Phoenix Open.
Harrington is seriously thinking of ditching the Omega Dubai Desert Classic for the Arizona desert TPC Scottsdale stadium-like course and savour the sounds of the infamous for the 162-yard par three 16th or ‘party hole’.
It’s the hole where Woods drove the crowd delirious in holing out for an ace in 1997 and also where you’re going to be booed loudly in playing a poor hot.
Also it is the same tournament where Woods two years later had some 20 spectators move a ‘loose impediment’ at the 15th hole.
And it’s for this reason Harrington wants to at least experience the atomsphere at least once in his career.
“I’m thinking instead of starting out here in Dubai next year of starting 2013 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open,” said Harrington.
“I’ve never played the event before and it’s the event with that noisy par three, 16th and surely you can’t miss that event once in your golfing career.
“I just like the whole noise of that hole and I think there is a place like that in golf, and all golf tournaments shouldn’t be the same.
“They’ve managed to create something unique there so I would love to play in the tournament at least once in my career, and that’s for sure.
“Normally I would go into my winter break thinking, ‘ooh I have to change this and change that’, but I’m going into a now nine-week break thinking I have to get a better routine and a better trigger to my routine, and better putting, as well.
“So over the nine weeks I should get some good work done and get a lot of work done on my putting and my game.”
And Harrington, who is a veteran of the pressure-cooker cauldron of six Ryder Cups, admitted he found easier playing with noise than without any outside sound disturbance.
“It’s really much easier to play golf where there is noise and that’s why it’s better to play when there is an ambient noise like when the wind is blowing because when it’s quite that’s when you start hearing things,” he said.
