Padraig Harrington explains why he carries two drivers, how he’s increased his swing speed with age
5 Min Read
Written by GolfWRX
In 2008, a year when he won both the PGA Championship and The Open Championship, Padraig Harrington, at 37 years old, averaged 296.3 yards off the tee on the PGA TOUR. That ranked him the 32nd longest player on the PGA TOUR that year.
In 2024, at 53 years old, Padraig Harrington averaged 308.2 yards off the tee on the Champions Tour, and in 2025, he says his highest recorded ball speed of the year is currently 189 mph. To put that in perspective, the average ball speed on the PGA TOUR right now is 173.88 mph, with Aldrich Potgieter currently leading the way with an average of 190.49 mph per drive.
Harrington isn’t turning back time with his driver distance, he’s actually getting faster in his later years.
This isn’t an accident, though. Harrington works hard to swing the club faster – he trains at home in Ireland to push his speed further, and he keeps a speed training device in his bag that he swings daily when on the road. He also simply works on swinging the club really fast on the range, without caring much about where the ball is going; he’s not working on his accuracy or his swing planes, he’s working on his speed.
“So when I swing this speed stick, it’s not a technique thing,” Harrington told GolfWRX.com on Wednesday at the 2025 Texas Children’s Houston Open. “It’s like doing a squat jump. It’s like just measuring your jump. It gives me that feedback. When I’m at home, I use different ones and I go through my sequence of things to push up my speed, and it’s always good to swing something fast every now and then. It’s one of those things."
The topic of length was already discussed to start the week by the top two players in the world at Memorial Park Golf Course. With wet conditions on the way world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and FedExCup leader Rory McIlroy suggested extra yardage off the tee was needed for an already long municipal golf course that's open to the public for most of the year. Because of this, Harrington believes recommends his speed practice to amateurs, too.
"It’s not a bad thing to swing something fast," Harrington added. "That doesn’t mean you should always swing your driver fast, too. But I say to my amateurs, at least 20 balls a week, you should be swinging really hard. Really, really trying to push it up there, and then play within yourself. You don’t have to swing as hard on the golf course, but you should sometimes in practice just to get a feel for it.”
This practice of pushing his speed forward, however, does have a drawback: Cracked driver faces.
“I always carry two drivers,” Harrington says. “Not in the tournament, but I warm up with a backup driver because I don’t want to crack the face. So I’ve always got two drivers on the go because if they crack, you’ve got to have a backup there, especially because I do a lot of speed work. If you do speed work, you tend to mishit the club. So it’s not that the club cracks, it’s just that I’ve mishit it so much, going pretty hard at it, that I will eventually crack them.”
Padraig Harrington on his pursuit of speed off the tee
On Wednesday in Houston, Harrington also touched on the topic of averages. Stats such as average ball speed and average distance are discussed plenty among players, coaches, rule makers, club designers, and in the media – even right here on the PGATOUR.COM Equipment Report. Harrington, however, prefers to discuss the extremes. The topic arose when we asked Harrington about his record ball speed with the driver so far this year.
“This year, 189 mph, I haven’t gotten to 190," Harrington said. "I reckon about 5 percent of the field will be able to go 190s here this week [in Houston]. You know, I laugh about them all talking about speed. ... They all start talking about averages. These are engineers, some of these people, and I’m going, ‘Since when does an engineer ever use an average?’ Like, if you use an average for a building, the building will fall down. You use your extremes."
For Harrington, it's all about that top number and the most a player can get out of their swing.
"When you’re talking ball speed, you want to look at what guys are capable of getting when they open their shoulders on an appropriate hole," Harrington added. "I think you’ll find seven people here this week that will break that 190 mph barrier."
To Harrington’s point, the best way to improve speed is to continue pushing your top-end ball speed higher, and then “playing within yourself” on the course by trying to hit the center of the face more often. The averages take care of themselves.
"I still haven’t seen anybody play at 200 (mph)," Harrington joked. "Seen a few on the range, but we haven’t seen anybody on the course. But one will come. We’re waiting for the one who does that and can play golf. That will be a dangerous combination.”
But for Harrington, the averages say that he averaged 308.2 yards off the tee on the Champions Tour in 2024, ranking him as the longest driver on the Tour last year by 6.9 yards over second place. And even if he doesn’t like averages, don’t be surprised if Harrington’s average distance and ball speed is even higher this year – he’s only getting faster with age, after all.
