As Padraig Harrington nears the end of his third season on the PGA Tour Champions – preparing for next week’s Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club November 7-10 – he appears to recognize the stark contrasts between the senior circuit and the PGA. Tour.

At 53, Harrington is still sharp enough to bomb it off the tee – a major advantage over his senior tour counterparts – but not quite capable of keeping pace with the PGA Tour’s younger players week in, week out.

That doesn’t mean he can’t compete on the PGA Tour again, as the three-time major champion proved he can do it with an impressive T22 at this year’s Open Championship at Royal Troon. However, in seven starts on the PGA Tour in 2024, he has missed the cut five times.

But Harrington has been nothing short of dominant when it comes to his performances in PGA Tour Champions events.

In 14 departures in 2024 On the senior circuit, Harrington didn’t miss a cut, won three tournaments, finished T10 seven times and earned more than $1.6 million. These are not quite Scottie Scheffler figuresbut they are nevertheless all impressive.

Given his success on the PGA Tour Champions, Harrington joked about having a sense of false confidence when the game is so sharp against the older guys, making him think he can translate it against the youngsters of the PGA Tour.

“When I’m here on the Champions tour and you’re playing well, you think ‘this is great,’” Harrington said on a Zoom call ahead of next week’s senior tour event. “But the better you play on the Champions Tour, the more you think you can beat the young guys. So it’s kind of a dead end in the sense that if you start winning on the Champions tour, you’re like, ‘Oh, maybe I can do that on the regular tour.’

Although Harrington has competed on both the Senior Tour and the PGA Tour in recent years, he has not won a PGA Tour event since the 2015 Honda Classic, with his last T10 coming at the Valero Texas Open 2023 – so he understands how difficult it is to translate sharp play from one round to the next.

He admitted he felt a little overwhelmed at this year’s Scottish Open, when he missed the cut after finishing 1-over.

“At the Scottish Open this year (on the regular tour), I definitely tended to play more on the Champions Tour. I felt a little lost,” he joked.

Despite the differences between the competitors on the two circuits, Harrington has previously stated that the senior circuit is “the most difficult circuit to keep your card” so he certainly doesn’t let any success go to his head.

“It’s really unforgiving,” Harrington said previously. “Thirty-six to keep your card is very, very tight. It doesn’t take much to give up those 36. That’s why you see the guys here practicing. And if you’re not one of those who works out, someone else will do it for you. And that means you will lose your position.

“The guys train like they trained on tour. In fact, they might even work a little harder here.

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