It’s July of 2008, the weekend prior to The Open Championship. The first round is five days away and Padraig Harrington, back at his home near Dublin, eagerly awaits the short trip across the Irish Sea to Royal Birkdale. Although he’s the defending champ, he still has something to prove.

The previous year, Harrington won his first major at Carnoustie, but it did not come easily. He arrived on the 18th tee that Sunday with a one-shot lead, but twice found the Barry Burn en route to a double bogey. Given new life after Sergio Garcia bogeyed the final hole, Harrington won the four-hole playoff – this time laying up short of the narrow water hazard that crosses in front of the 18th green.

While happy with the result, the win was hardly satisfying. The ugly finish did not sit well with Harrington; it wasn’t the way he had imagined winning The Open so many years earlier as a kid. Who dreams of making double to claim the Claret Jug? “I made some mistakes on the 72nd hole,” he recalls, “and that caused a little bit of questioning.”

Some wondered if the outcome was a fluke, more a reflection of Garcia’s continued shortcomings in majors – an issue that would last another decade, disappearing only with his win at the Masters in April. Meanwhile, in the ensuing year after Carnoustie, Harrington had made 24 starts without a win, dropping from sixth to 13th in the world rankings. Still, his confidence never wavered, thanks to nine top-10 finishes in that stretch.

Back on that Saturday in 2008, Harrington is determined to leave no questions at Royal Birkdale. He pounds balls on the range for a couple of hours, then returns to his house that night for his usual workout. Performing speed drills on the impact bag, he goes full-tilt, a man on a mission.

That’s when near-disaster strikes.

After one of his swings, a sharp pain shoots through his right wrist. Harrington immediately ends his workout. He can’t take another swing, his wrist unable to support the weight of the club.

He wakes up Sunday morning. No improvement. Not since Ben Hogan in 1954 had a defending Open champ not played – and Hogan’s decision was a voluntary one. Harrington’s status was now in jeopardy. If he can’t hold a club, there’s no way he can tee off Thursday.

The next few days are critical. The injury will require constant treatment from his physiotherapist. Harrington’s practice schedule – on a course he last competed on 10 years earlier at the Open when he missed the cut – is in tatters. He leans on his sports psychologist, Dr. Bob Rotella, for help in making the most of an unfortunate situation. His whole routine must change.

A month earlier, Tiger Woods had won the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines on essentially one leg, having suffered a double stress fracture in his left tibia while undergoing rehab after arthroscopic surgery two months earlier. Woods had to endure 72 holes of regulation, and another 19 in a playoff before defeating Rocco Mediate on the first sudden-death hole. Woods had shown it was possible to win a major despite a serious injury.

But Harrington does not take any comfort in the Tiger story. It will not be a source of inspiration. Instead, he focuses on his own determination. When faced with previous injuries and illnesses, mostly with his neck and shoulders, Harrington has taken great pride in never pulling out of a tournament. He knows the wrist problem is serious, but he will find a way to overcome it.

“Knowing my personality,” Harrington says, “I was going to go off the first tee anyway, no matter how it felt.”

As it turned out, the wrist injury may have been the best thing to happen to him.

Since the end of World War II through to last year, 284 majors were played. Just 15 were won by the defending champion, a 5 percent success rate. Woods did it four times. Only one of Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 majors came as a defending champ. Going into 2008, it had been more than 100 years since a European winner of the Open had successfully defended – Scotland’s James Braid in 1906.

Entering any tournament as a defending champion is not easy. There are more off-course demands on your time, more social commitments and media obligations. Keeping a regular practice routine and rest schedule is important, too. The calendar for a defending champ fills up quickly.

In helping Harrington deal with his injury, Rotella stressed the potential positives of the situation. Unable to maintain his usual practice sessions at Royal Birkdale, Harrington could avoid the exhaustive schedule that defending champs must handle, especially in majors.

“It allowed me to do all that work and not feel pulled in all different directions,” Harrington says. “You want to be respectful of the responsibilities of being a defending champion, but it can sometimes get in the way of your preparations.”

While the injury improved enough to allow him to hit a few chips, he did not play a single practice hole in the lead-up to the first round. That doesn’t mean he didn’t study the course.

Earlier in his career, Harrington would play practice rounds on his own. But gradually he began practicing with partners. It wasn’t just for the company; Harrington would study their shots as much as his own. If they attempted shots from a certain location, he would make mental notes in case he found himself in the same spot.

Unable to practice, Harrington this time decided to follow players whose games he considered similar to his own. What irons were they hitting into par 3s? What strategy were they taking on the longer holes? Even if he couldn’t practice the shot himself, Harrington at least could devise a gameplan.

“Basically I let somebody else play my practice rounds,” he says.

Meanwhile, not grinding away on the range also paid dividends.

Harrington always admired Colin Montgomerie’s ability to avoid practice fatigue. Although Monty never won a major, he does have 50 worldwide wins, including three PGA TOUR Champions majors. Part of that success, Harrington suspected, was because Monty always felt fresh and rested going into the final round.

How did Harrington know this? First-hand experience. Whenever Montgomerie dropped his bucket of balls near Harrington’s on the range, Harrington would pick up his bucket and move away. He knew that in a 10-minute warm-up period, Monty would spend 9-1/2 of those minutes chatting to whoever was next to him. Harrington – who, to be fair, has the gift of gab himself – wanted to keep swinging, keep grinding. He couldn’t afford to be within earshot of Monty.

“Monty never practiced,” Harrington said. “I was always jealous of that. He literally never hit it.”

And now, Harrington realized, he had unintentionally taken the same approach at Royal Birkdale. He never took a full practice swing. The injured wrist had turned him into Monty.

“He was always very good on a Sunday because he had done so much less than everybody else (by) Sunday,” Harrington says. “That’s very much the way I was at Birkdale, because I had done nothing.

“In a nice world, you would do nothing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You wouldn’t play any golf. But that doesn’t work every week.”

Besides feeling rested, the injury presented one other benefit. It reduced the pressure on him. Defending champs tend to wear targets and face higher expectations. But everybody knew about Harrington’s injury. The question for him now wasn’t whether he could win a second consecutive Open, but simply: Could he play?

“It’s harder to play a tournament as the defending champion,” Harrington notes. “You’re feeling the same way on Thursday as the leaders are on Saturday going into Sunday. You feel four days of pressure instead of one.”

The only pressure now for Harrington was healing fast enough to tee off Thursday. He explored every potential remedy. Acupuncture. Ultrasound. Anti-inflammatories. Ice. He even visited Phil Mickelson’s hotel every night to borrow his light therapy machine.

Mentally, he was freed from whatever expectations he would have otherwise faced.

“Our emphasis was always on the positive,” he says. “I enjoyed being the defending champ that week. There was no pressure. I was fresh. There were actually a lot of plusses to the injury.”

Now he just had to take advantage of the situation – and that required one small detail.

Being able to swing a club.

Despite focusing on the positives, Harrington couldn’t help being a realist. He knew early in the week there was a chance he couldn’t play. But by Thursday morning, those doubts were gone. Able to at least hold a club, he was determined to make his tee time, hoping that adrenaline would overcome any pain he felt or any rust to his game.

Unfortunately, the weather at Royal Birkdale that Thursday morning was awful, with winds of up to 50 mph and a stringing rain that came in sideways. It wasn’t the worst Harrington has ever faced at The Open – the third round of the 2002 Open in Muirfield may be the worst ever; Mark O’Meara said it “looked like the world was coming to an end” – but it was close.

Again, it was beneficial for Harrington – part-equalizer, part-distraction. Playing in bad weather doesn’t bother him; he feels it gives him an advantage over players who grumble and complain about it. And figuring out his gameplan in the poor conditions took his mind off his injury.

Then on the sixth hole, Harrington’s drive found the rough. It wasn’t in the thick heather, but the lie was bad enough that his wrist would be tested. He could only hope to advance the ball less than 100 yards, but it would require a full swing. How his wrist responded would determine his availability the rest of the week.

He swung, made solid contact … and felt no pain. A sense of relief rushed over him.

“It was a miserable morning, but at that moment, I felt like it was the most sunny course in the world,” Harrington recalls. “My wrist had held up.

“I was in a good frame of mind. I was just happy to be playing and able to hit full shots without pain. The fact that I had come through at that moment left me feeling good. Once I hit that shot at the sixth hole, I was good to go.”

Harrington made bogey on that hole – his third of the day – and would make three more coming in, including in his last two holes. He had just two birdies, but given the conditions, he was happy to sign for a 4-over 74.

That afternoon, he was back at his rental home with his family. He normally doesn’t watch golf on television and had no plans to do so this day. In fact, unlike those practice rounds, he’d rather avoid watching his fellow pros play once the competition begins.

But when he walked past the TV room, the rest of the family was watching The Open, checking on how the afternoon wave was faring. Harrington took a quick peek – and practically blanched.

The weather had softened, giving those with a late tee time a big advantage. He saw Adam Scott using a 3-wood to reach the par-5 15th with his second shot. Harrington also had used a fairway wood on his second shot … as well as on his third. Suddenly, he wasn’t so happy about that 74, which ultimately would leave him tied for 38th once the day ended.

“That was devastating,” he says. “I was so dismayed. If you get on the wrong side of the draw, then it’s hard to catch up, especially when the weather is nice and the scoring conditions are good.

“But on Friday, it all evened itself out. It continued to be a difficult week with the weather, and that allowed me to catch up.”

Just three players managed to shoot under par in the first round; a dozen more did so on Friday. Harrington’s 68 was one of them, as he moved into a tie for fourth.

The weather for Saturday’s third round was again nasty – the 50-mph winds had returned -- and nobody in the field broke par. Harrington’s 2-over 72 left him tied for second place with K.J. Choi, two shots off the pace.

The leader?

Greg Norman. He was 53 years old at the time.

Say hello to the sentimental favorite.

Liverpool to Dublin is about 135 miles. Some 50 percent of Liverpudlians claim Irish descent, which explains why the city is sometimes referred to as Ireland’s second capital. In fact, the four most famous people from Liverpool – John, Paul, George and Ringo – have Irish roots (although there appears to be a bit of uncertainty with Ringo, always the odd man out).

Plus, Royal Birkdale is the closest Open Championship course in the UK to Dublin.

Why bring this up? Because Harrington should’ve gone into that Sunday in 2008 as the people’s choice to win. The defending champ, a son of Ireland, battling back from injury -- that’s a great story. Only it wasn’t the most delicious.

The 53-year-old Norman was tugging on the heartstrings, just like 59-year-old Tom Watson would do the very next year at Turnberry. Known more for his near-misses in majors than his two Open wins – the last one 15 years earlier -- the Shark could finally get some redemption by becoming the Open’s oldest champion.

Norman joked that his presence atop the leaderboard probably had the rest of the field wondering, “My god, what’s he doing up there?”

Certainly, Harrington had his backers – Irish roots run deep – but “the neutrals would’ve been with Greg” in the final pairing. Norman’s impact was also reflected in the box office; more than 210,000 people attended the tournament, an impressive number especially considering Tiger Woods did not play due to injury.

Added Harrington: “I was very conscious of the Greg Norman story, his swansong, that it would’ve been great if he had won. But I was also very conscious not to let that affect me. I couldn’t get caught in the media hype.”

He was also conscious not to let his guard down and expect Norman to fade.

In 2002, Harrington had played an exhibition match against Norman at the opening of the Doonbeg Golf Course off the Atlantic coast in County Clare. Norman won the match, 2 and 1. Although it was six years later, Harrington had no doubt Norman still possessed the skills to finish the job at Royal Birkdale.

“I knew he could play,” Harrington says. “I could see that he still had the physical tools. It was just a question of whether he was mentally interested.

“I wasn’t going into Sunday with any illusions that he was 53 years old and far past his prime. He was well capable of playing well and winning. I was going into Sunday knowing he would be mentally engaged.”

But much to the dismay of the “neutrals,” Norman opened with three consecutive bogeys and made another one at the sixth. Harrington remembers that Norman wasn’t playing badly, only that he couldn’t get any breaks.

Still, when they made the turn, Norman had the lead. Harrington finished his front nine with three consecutive bogeys, and Choi had taken himself out of it, going out in 40.

Despite the shaky play, Harrington was impressed with Norman’s demeanor. In fact, it may have even helped his own game.

“He was great with the encouragement,” Harrington said. “He was nearly too nice. I wasn’t expecting it. In the final round of a major, it’s very important who you play with. I couldn’t have picked a better guy.

“I assume he was a tougher character in his heyday, but on that Sunday he was a good guy to play with. Not just a gentleman but a truly nice person.”

Ultimately, Harrington would stick a dagger in the back of that nice person with a shot that will define his career.

He didn’t need to go for it. But he couldn’t help himself.

Thanks to a couple of back-nine birdies, Harrington held a two-shot lead when he reached the par-5 17th hole at Royal Birkdale. His closest competitor wasn’t Norman, who was three shots off the pace. Rather, it was Ian Poulter, already in the clubhouse after a 1-under 69 that left him at 7 over.

A par-par finish would seem safe enough to seal the win for Harrington. But he wasn’t aware of Poulter’s status. He was still concentrating on his playing partner. If Norman went eagle-birdie on the last two holes, Harrington would have no margin for error.

Or as he said, “Still worried about the fairytale story. There was more potential for Greg Norman to do something and more potential for the story all the world wanted.”

So after blistering his tee shot into the middle of the fairway at 17, Harrington made a bold decision. At 272 yards from the pin, he faced a slight downhill lie, with a stiff left-to-right wind. He pulled his 5-wood, the club he had used two holes earlier to set up a birdie. He was going for the green.

A reckless move? Some might say so. But Harrington didn’t see it that way. The 5-wood is his favorite club, and it especially performs well when he needs to hit a draw.

Plus, he was confident in his swing, having found a groove on the back nine. As he likes to say, it’s easier to hit a great shot when you’re playing good, and much more difficult to hit a good shot when you’re playing poorly.

A year earlier at Carnoustie, after finding the Barry Burn twice on the 72nd hole, Harrington faced a short, delicate chip with his fifth shot. With the wheels coming off, the shot was much more challenging – at least mentally -- than the one at Royal Birkdale. He flipped it close, took his medicine and beat Garcia in the playoff. Given the circumstances, he considers that chip to be the best shot he ever hit.

This time he was going for the hero shot. “I was unbreakable at that very moment,” he says. “… As much as it was a great shot, I was in a great place to hit it.”

It was perfect. He carried the greenside bunker, the ball rolling to within 4 feet. Easy eagle. Four-shot lead with one hole left. Second consecutive Open Championship win secured.

After the season, the European Tour voted his approach into 17 as the shot of the year. For Harrington, it was the shot of a lifetime. It was how he dreamed as a kid to win the Open.

“No luck, no doubt this time,” Harrington says. “If I was going to write a script as a 15-year-old, I would’ve written the script exactly how it played out at Birkdale.”

As for the whereabouts of his 5-wood? Harrington can get re-acquainted with it this week. It’s hanging on a wall inside the Royal Birkdale clubhouse.