Padraig Harrington Discusses His Return to the Masters and Startup Golf Leagues

The 50-year-old Irishman has high expectations for his first start at Augusta since 2015, and thoughts on how the PGA Tour can protect its most valuable assets.

In this week's "Beyond the Clubhouse" podcast, 50-year-old, three-time major winner Padraig Harrington joins the show. In April he will play in his first Masters since 2015, and he's going into it thinking he can win.

"When you've won three majors, there's nothing but winning. I'm not going there to finish fifth or second," Harrington said. "I get a little annoyed with people when they tell me 'good job' after a top 20 and I say to myself 'what do you mean? Do you not think I'm good enough to win?'"

The former European Ryder Cup captain also weighed in on the discussion about other startup tours. Harrington said the PGA Tour needs to lock up its assets (the players) with non-compete clauses right now before the other tours try to get started.

Harrington insisted he had "no allegiance" to any leagues but said threats from either the PGL, the Saudi-backed league called LIV Golf Invitational Series or big-money investors in the U.S. make it imperative for the PGA Tour to seize the moment.

"It's great that people want to put money into golf," Harrington says, "but I do feel the PGA Tour has to be wary going forward because ultimately if Amazon Prime or somebody came in and said we want to start a league with 15 events and we have $2-4 billion, they could buy the main assets of the PGA Tour, the main assets being the players."

"The PGA Tour needs to lock up the rights of the players," Harrington adds. "Nobody wouldn't sign to play with the PGA Tour if they said 'you have to sign a two-year non-compete' ... as much as we are independent contractors, we actually have to lose that in order for somebody not to come in and buy us out."

Harrington understands that most of the opposition to the Saudi-backed league is based on "moral grounds," but that doesn't protect the PGA Tour from "a U.S. venture fund coming in and doing this."

Hit the play button above to listen, and look for more new episodes of Beyond the Clubhouse coming soon to the Morning Read Podcast Network.