By Will Pearson, europeantour.com
at Whistling Straits
It is easy to forget, given the widespread success in recent years, but before Padraig Harrington hoisted the gargantuan Wanamaker Trophy in 2008 no European had won the US PGA Championship in almost 80 long years.
Up until the Irishman’s timely triumph seven years ago, you had to go back to 1930 and to Scotland’s Tommy Armour to find a European victory in what has now long been the season’s fourth and final Major Championship.
Just 12 years after losing the sight in his left eye to a mustard gas explosion at the tail end of the First World War, Armour added his second Major title at Fresh Meadow Country Club in Queens, New York, but little did the Edinburgh native know then that his accomplishment would remain unmatched by his European counterparts for nearly eight decades.
Harrington the history maker in Michigan
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
Having won his second Claret Jug in succession at Royal Birkdale just three weeks previously, Harrington arrived at Oakland Hills, Michigan, as one of the hottest players on the planet.
Unbowed by the pressure that billing might have bestowed upon some, the then-36 year old broke the European Wanamaker duck and with it also became the first European to ever win back-to-back Major titles, once again holding off the advances of Sergio Garcia – who he beat in a play-off at Carnoustie to win a maiden Open Championship the previous year – as well as American Ben Curtis.
To know I achieved something like that is very special.
Padraig Harrington
After a back and forth tussle between the three, it would all come down to the final green, as Harrington curled in a downhill left-to-right putt from all of 15 feet to cue the kind of emphatic fist pump befitting such a dramatic finish.
“I have probably been the leading player in Europe for close to six years. A couple of times, I might have lost it, but more or less for close to six years,” said Harrington.
"I really do like the fact that no other European has won two Majors consecutively, though, because I hold a lot of European players who I grew up watching in high esteem. To believe that I achieved something that they hadn't is very special."
Kaymer goes the distance at Whistling Straits
This week will be particularly special for Martin Kaymer, who returns to Wisconsin five years on from a memorable maiden Major triumph at Whistling Straits.
Back in 2010, with Harrington having seemingly opened the Wanamaker floodgates two years earlier, the German edged a thrilling encounter, besting Bubba Watson in a sudden-death play-off to cement his status as one of the game’s foremost up-and-coming talents.
On the exposed shores of Lake Michigan, Kaymer became the first continental European to win the US PGA and, despite having experienced a meteoric rise through the golfing ranks, the Dusseldorf man was visibly stunned.
"I was nervous in the regular round, but in the play-off it was strange - I felt very calm, very confident," said Kaymer, who won a further three times that year to be crowned European Number One.
"It's just amazing. I don't realise what has just happened - I just won my first Major and I am just on Tour for four years. I have goose bumps."
McIlroy king of Kiawah Island
Two years on from Kaymer’s win in windswept Wisconsin, the US PGA found itself in the Deep South as Kiawah Island, South Carolina, played witness to yet another incredible romp to Major success for a European in the shape of a certain prodigious Northern Irishman.
Just 14 months after strolling to an eight-stroke triumph at the US Open, Rory McIlroy matched his own brilliance with another eight-shot winning margin as a red-hot run of 67-66 over the weekend saw Englishman David Lynn beaten into a distant second – a performance which left the young man lost for words.
“It was a great round of golf - I am speechless,” said the Ulsterman, whose victory, like his Ryder Cup team-mate Kaymer before him, helped him to The Race to Dubai crown following a season-ending conquest at the DP World Tour Championship.
“The game-plan was just to play solid. I got off to a bit of a shaky start, but settled into it and I thought my putting today was phenomenal.
"It means an awful lot to look at the names on that trophy and put mine alongside them. On 18 I was just taking the whole thing in, but I didn't allow myself to think about it until then.”
Four for Rors at Valhalla
If 2012 was itself a very good year for McIlroy, 2014 was his annus mirabilis.
At Valhalla, a place of myth in Norse mythology, the Northern Irishman achieved legendary status as – on the back of brilliant wins in The Open at Royal Liverpool and the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone – the then-25 year old stepped into the record books in near darkness in Kentucky 12 months ago.
After a torrential downpour resulted in a two-hour delay and a race against time to get finished, McIlroy battled to a one-shot victory over Phil Mickelson to become the third youngest player after Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus to win four Majors.
I never thought I'd get this far at 25 years of age.
Rory McIlroy
"It's been just incredible," said McIlroy, the fourth European winner of the US PGA in seven years after that near-80 year drought before Harrington’s landmark triumph.
"I didn't think in my wildest dreams I would have a summer like this. I just played the best golf in my life.
"I gutted it out today, it was a little different to my previous Major wins. I think I showed a lot of guts to get the job done.
"I said I thought winning The Open Championship a few weeks ago had sort of put me on a higher level in this game. But then to win a fourth major here, to be one behind Phil, one behind Seve, level with Ernie, level with Raymond Floyd. I mean, I never thought I'd get this far at 25 years of age.”
And in 2015?
Back at Whistling Straits for a third time after previously hosting the US PGA in 2004 and 2010, can another European this week join Messrs Harrington, Kaymer and McIlroy as custodian of the titanic, 27-pound hunk of silver known only as the Wanamaker Trophy?
Only time will tell.
