Padraig Harrington ended his winless season in style Sunday at Scioto Country Club, successfully defending his title in the U.S. Senior Open and notching a record-tying third victory in the championship. And he made it look easy by once again relegating Stewart Cink to second place.

Harrington, 54, tied Miller Barber for most wins in the national championship for players 50 years and older, and in the process won on a course that had never seen a foreign-born winner. In six previous events beginning with Bobby Jones in the 1926 U.S. Open and including the 1931 Ryder Cup, Scioto had been the exclusive province for American victories.

Not this time.

A native of Dublin, Ireland, Harrington fired the best round of the day, a four-under 66, and coasted to his 12th win on the PGA Tour Champions and his fourth major title on that circuit. With a 12-under 268 total, Harrington notched only his third win in the last two years—but they are all of the major variety. In 2025, the World Golf Hall of Famer edged Cink by a stroke to win the U.S. Senior Open and then captured the Senior Open Championship.

“I’ve got to say. It feels great, but obviously there wasn’t the drama that I know we normally provide down the stretch,” said Harrington, who trailed Cink by a stroke after 54 holes but cruised to a four-stroke victory to pocket $800,000 to go along with a third Francis D. Ouimet Memorial Trophy. “That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t feeling it. I was really trying to stay in it, stay focused. I knew I had a nice lead which let me play to the middle of the greens, let me hit the shots that I did. I hit some big shots coming on the way home to take all the stress out of it.”

Vying to become the first player to win the first three majors of the year, Cink struggled with his driver much of the day, and only a birdie at the last enabled him to salvage 71 and a 272 total for his second straight runner-up finish in the U.S. Senior Open. George McNeill, the only other legitimate contender, also shot 71 to end up third at six-under 274. LIV Golf League player Ian Poulter closed with a 67 to finish another stroke back in fourth place.

“Golf got hard for me today, and it happens,” said Cink, 53, who had won the Tradition and Senior PGA Championship earlier this year. “It’s been a while since I had a day like that where start to finish it pretty much felt difficult, but today it kind of did, and my scorecard pretty much tells the story.”

The story was pretty much written early.

Harrington, who joined Barber, Gary Player and Allen Doyle in back-to-back Senior Open titles, flipped a one-stroke deficit into a three-shot lead by the third hole and never looked back. The Irishman birdied the first two holes from 18 and three feet, respectively, while Cink bogeyed Nos. 2 and 3 after missing the fairway. But the deciding blow came at the long par-4 eighth. Cink, after climbing back with two shots, was staring at a bogey putt after driving into the water when Harrington guided home a big-bending 30-footer for birdie.

“That was a big hole. We are so in the present that we don’t always feel those momentum shifts, but looking back, I’m sure it probably did … that was a big 15 minutes,” Cink said. “Then also, I missed my putt on 9. Hit it tight on 9, had about a seven-, eight-footer. That little series of events there for 20, 25 minutes there was a big deal. It could have flipped my way, and it didn’t.”

Harrington agreed. “I think 8 was a big hole in the sense of him making bogey, but also me holing the putt and George missing the putt [from 10 feet]. It was a big hole all around because Stewart … a two-shot swing with Stewart, but George thinking that if anybody is going to make birdie, he’s going to be invigorated by that. But I holed a long putt and he misses.”

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“Padraig has always been a world-class player,” said McNeill after an encouraging U.S. Senior Open debut. “He did the right things. Hits the right shots. Hits it fairly straight. Good short game. Makes a lot of putts. He does what he’s supposed to do, what a good player, a world-class player, you would expect of him.”

In the midst of eight straight tournaments, Harrington now proceeds to the Scottish Open and Open Championship, the latter which he won twice to go with a PGA Championship victory. Winning a third U.S. Senior Open sets him up nicely before taking on the younger pros for two weeks. No one has won more is another way of looking at it.

“I like creating records, and to be part of that is a big deal. It just goes to show how hard it is,” he said. “Hopefully I have a few more chances in me, as well. But I like that. No one has won more Senior Opens than me, which considering the people who would have played it over the years, that is a nice stat to put on my CV. I might have to put that right up at the top.”

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Main Image: Dylan Buell