Alex Cejka Outlasts Padraig Harrington in Playoff at Senior British Open
PORTHCAWL, Wales — It took two playoff holes before Germany’s Alex Cejka made a birdie to win the Senior British Open at Royal Porthcawl on Sunday over Ireland’s Padraig Harrington.
The major was a war of attrition on the links, as the field of 70 was battered and bruised by Mother Nature’s combination of wind and rain and slowly the contenders fell away, leaving in the end just two.
Those two had interesting stories of how they got into the playoff. Cejka, the leader by one shot to start the day, lost his ball on the par-4 opening hole when his second shot could not be located.
The subsequent double bogey was Cejka’s first all week.
Harrington continued to struggle with the tee shot at the par-4 16th and made bogey Sunday, dropping to 5 over for the tournament.
The three-time major winner also struggled with his chipping around Royal Porthcawl, and it would eventually be his undoing.
Cejka and Harrington continued to succumb to the conditions down the stretch, with Cejka bogeying the 16th and 17th holes and then making a mess of one of the easiest holes on the course, the par-5 18th, hitting a wayward drive left and making par when birdie would have sealed his third career victory.
Harrington was equally guilty of making mistakes down the stretch with bogeys at Nos. 14 and 16, the one at 14 coming after a missed putt of less than two feet.
In the end Harrington would break the string of bad holes with a two-putt birdie at the last, tying Cejka for the first time all day to force the playoff.
“I said to my caddie, par is bonus today, I don't care how many pars we make,” Cejka said, recalling his conversation with his caddie after the lost ball. “If we finish, second, third, fifth, 10th, it doesn't matter, let's try to stay positive let's try to play good golf, let’s try to make as many pars as we can, and we'll see what happens.”
The first playoff holes produced routine birdies, with both players not getting their putts to the hole as the wind was freshening. Harrington missed from off the green, hitting maybe his best putt of the day, and Cejka missed from a similar position on the green where he could have won in regulation.
Going back to the 18th, Harrington again had a 9-iron in his hand and tried to hit a three-quarter shot downwind for his second, but unlike the shot in regulation that stayed on the green with a good look at eagle, or the shot in the first playoff hole that trickled over but stayed on the fringe, this ball went far enough to find the primary rough behind the green.
Adding insult to injury, the ball had a tuft of grass directly behind it, not allowing Harrington a preferred chip-and-run shot, but forcing the Irishman to hit a shot that would get through the tuft of grass and somehow control the ball.
He failed, looking like he had chili-dipped the chip shot.
“When there's a tuft of grass, you want to hit it as hard as you can in order so that the tuft doesn't come into play, and I just quit,” Harrington said. “I was using the 58-degree (wedge) and in the middle of my stance really hit it and, of course, sometimes when you're thinking of hitting it, what do you do, you quit.
Harrington for three days talked about his poor chipping performance and fatigue.
“What's annoying is I seem to only play well when there's an urgency which is a little annoying,” Harrington said. “And you know like I finished up this tournament tied and by God will I sit back and go through the first three days, I left half a dozen shots a day on the golf course.”
For Cejka, he overcame a slight tear in his meniscus on his right knee that was exacerbated by walking two rounds in the BMW International Open on the DP World Tour and four rounds of the U.S. Senior Open.
In the end the difference was all the short putts that Cejka made down the stretch, courtesy of his old reliable Odyssey two-ball which he won both of his previous senior majors with.
It had been on the bench for over a year, but just recently made it back into the starting lineup just in time for major win No. 3.
“I'm playing against Hall of Famers and major champions,” Cejka said. “I'm blessed that I'm able to tee it up with them and sometimes even beat them. So I'm really, really happy."