2015 Honda Classic results: What we learned from Padraig Harrington’s win at PGA National

The PGA Tour needed an extra day and extra holes to finish up the Honda Classic, but Monday’s mid-day finish was a dramatic way to start the Florida swing. Here’s what we learned at the first event of what is now the unofficial Masters prep season.

Last week, I wrote about how we almost always want the biggest names and top talents at the top of the world rankings to win. But James Hahn, who sold shoes at Nordstrom’s to get by at one point, matched and beat the overwhelming force of world-class players like Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia. It was fun to watch the underdog get a life-changing win.

This week brought a different kind of longshot victor in Padraig Harrington, now the oldest winner of the Honda Classic. Unlike Hahn, Harrington had been at the top of golf, winning three majors in a two-year span. But Paddy, the constant tinkerer and over-thinker, started fiddling with that major-championship swing and fell off the map.

Before Sunday, his last win was that 2008 PGA Championship. Almost 2,400 days and 118 PGA Tour starts later, Harrington showed up on Monday and rolled off four-straight back nine birdies and rolled in one on the 18th green to get to a playoff. Watching Harrington crumble on Sunday night with higher ranked leaderboard mainstays like Patrick Reed and Ian Poulter passing him by, the Irishman seemed like a longshot just to even be in the mix down the stretch.

But much like Hahn last week, it was Harrington who hit the shots, not his higher-ranked peers. A perfect tee shot at the 17th locked it up in a playoff against Daniel Berger.

Eerily, it’s the second straight week the 297th ranked player in the world won on the PGA Tour.

Now that the West Coast swing has ended and we’ll be spending the month of March in Florida, expect to see lots and lots of water. PGA National is a resort-style course in the Palm Beach area that has water on almost every hole, and often down both sides of the hole. The most famous stretch is the “Bear Trap,” three holes from Nos. 15-17 loaded with water trouble that have wrecked many rounds at this event.

The water balls can be fun and cause quick and wild movement on the leaderboard, but that’s best reserved for late in the final round. The brutal winds on Thursday left just 19 players under par, and after the first wayward shots went splash, the broadcast became a bore with constant shots of ripples in the water. Everyone was fired up to see Rory McIlroy’s PGA Tour debut and all the other bombers and top ranked players at one of the most loaded early-season events. Instead, we mostly got grinding for bogeys and pars that became drudgery.

The water balls of the final round on Sunday and Monday, however, were an entirely different thrill. First there was Poulter, who had hit just six balls in water in his first 198 holes at PGA National but rinsed five in his final round alone. It started on Sunday with that ghastly shank with an 8-iron on a simple par-3.

That hazard wasn’t even intended for that hole, but that Poulter swing found it anyways. On the very next hole, he overcooked his drive and drew it into the drink down the left.

Those back-to-back water balls were just the start for Poulter, who rinsed twice in one hole Monday morning on the way to a triple bogey 7.

Poulter imploded most spectacularly, but he wasn’t the only one in the final group. The Bear Trap claimed both Harrington and Reed, who each held the lead at the time they dropped their tee shots in the drink.

And that’s how you end up with Daniel Berger, who started the round nine shots off the lead, in a playoff with Harrington. It’s also how you end up with the final group needing almost three hours and 20 minutes to play only 11 damn holes.

In the playoff, it was Berger’s turn to implode at the Bear Trap, leaving his ball too far out to the left at the 17th and opening the door for Paddy.

On Sunday, all the water balls, bad golf, and big scores stopped being so boring. Was the drama of the final round worth the drudgery of the first three days?

Reed continued his rapid ascent towards the top of the world rankings this week. It was just a year ago at Doral, where he’ll defend his WGC title this week, that Reed proclaimed himself a “top-five player.” That Doral win was his third in less than seven months, and he added a fourth at the top of this year in Maui. Reed struggled a bit in the drama and fallout from those precocious top-five comments.

But after that uneven summer, Reed is back to playing world-class golf. The Ryder Cup in the fall was probably a big part of it, but we’re now at the point of expecting Reed to be there every week he tees it up. He’s not been as hyped or marketable as some of the other top American “prospects” in their early-to-mid 20s, but he’s the most successful.

Reed held a share of the lead through much of the final round before a water ball at the 15th resulted in a double bogey and extinguished his chances.

But it was telling that between all the names on the first page of the leaderboard, Reed was the one we favored to emerge. He’s earned that status as a closer over the last 19 months. Reed is 16th in the world and trending quickly towards those top-five comments becoming a reality.

Phil Mickelson absolutely let it rip to start his final round of the Honda Classic on Sunday. Among those hoping to run 54-hole leader Poulter down, Lefty blasted his tee shot 332 yards to set up a 30-yard chip that wasn’t his best, rolling past the pin by about 10 feet. (image via PGATour)

No harm, though, as Mickelson, who has been struggling with his putter, drained the putt for a birdie.

Mickelson, who undertook a strict offseason training regimen to lose weight and gain club head speed, has been really cranking it. He smacked his second shot to the green from 247 yards out on the par-5 third.

Phil had to settle for a disappointing birdie when his eagle putt skimmed the rim of the cup, but that laser from 250 was vintage Phil that we had not seen in some time.

Mickelson hovered around the top 10 for most of the weekend. It was a nice change from the ugly two missed cuts he had at the top of a season we thought would be a rebound from last year, the worst of his career. He wasn’t his sharpest, but this was a big improvement and he showed once again that he can hang with the young guys as the Masters rapidly approaches.

Now he’s off to play the annual Seminole member-pro, which draws some of the heaviest hitters in the world, before a trip north to Augusta to get in some work there.

So PGA National to Seminole to Augusta to Doral -- that’s a pretty incredible stretch in just a few days.

Here are the final results from the Honda. The Tour now heads just south to Miami and Doral for the first WGC event of the year.