Ireland’s Padraig Harrington wants to get a monkey off his back – and keep another one out of his golf bag – when he starts his year at the Maybank Malaysian Open from February 16-19.
Harrington will tee-up at Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club looking to end a run of near misses in the tournament, having been runner-up twice and finishing in the top ten on two other occasions.
And he will be hoping to avoid a repeat of his experience at last year’s event when he fell victim to a mischievous monkey at the Saujana Golf and Country Club.
“I was playing a practice round with Stephen Browne on the Monday when a monkey made off with my binoculars at the eighth tee and went straight up a tree with them,” he recalled.
“We could see him trying to eat them and taunting us with them. A caddie went to get them back and an hour later he caught up with us with the binoculars in his hands.
“The monkey had done more damage to them with his teeth than anyone could have done with a knife. Buttons were ripped off and chunks taken out of them, but luckily enough they still worked!”
Harrington went on to finish the tournament in joint eighth place, falling away with a final round 74 that left him 11 shots behind Thailand’s Thongchai Jaidee, who won the event for the second year running.
If Jaidee can repeat the feat again this year he will join Ernie Els, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie, Tiger Woods and Ian Woosnam in the illustrious band of golfers to have won the same title three years in a row, but he will find some tough competition in the shape of Harrington, fellow Ryder Cup star Miguel Angel Jiménez of Spain and Chinese trailblazer Zhang Lian Wei.
