PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Matthew Wolff, Joaquin Niemann and Collin Morikawa are all examples of the PGA Tour’s youth movement. Wolff and Niemann won before they were eligible to celebrate legally with an alcoholic beverage while Morikawa won the PGA Championship at age 23. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Scott Harrington, the Players Championship 40-year-old virgin.
“I definitely didn’t think it would take until now to be here,” he said.
Harrington is set to make his debut at the PGA Tour’s signature event this week. But he isn’t even the oldest first-timer here this week. That dubious distinction belongs to Australian Cameron Percy, 46.
“When you write down your goals when you’re younger than this, you think, yeah, I’ll be there, but it took a long time,” Percy said. “Everyone has been coming up congratulating me. It’s pretty cool. It’s like, ‘Is this really your first time?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ They’re like, ‘Wow.’”
Wow, indeed. Both Percy and Harrington are stories in perseverance. Harrington didn’t make it to the PGA Tour until earning his card by finishing No. 19 on the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour money list after grinding for 16 years on minor-league circuits. That’s after putting his career on hold in 2018 to care for his wife, Jenn, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma six months after they got married and now is in remission.
He made his professional debut in 2004, but concedes that it wasn’t until his late 20s, early 30s that he thought he was good enough to do well on the Korn Ferry Tour. The low point? In 2008, he had conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour and made only three cuts in 16 starts and earned $5,776. Meanwhile, his former college teammate at Northwestern, Luke Donald, was an established star and on his way to becoming World No. 1 in 2011.
“There were times where I was thinking I’m in my prime and I should be on the PGA Tour and I’m barely cutting it on the Korn Ferry Tour,” Harrington said.
But he never gave himself a time limit to make it. Every year he could see “micro progressions.”
“I never had a year where I lost my card and financially I was able to sustain. The difference between 50th and getting your card is so small,” he explained. “You just have to turn a fifth into a second and a 10th into a sixth. It didn’t always look like I was getting better but I always felt like I was.”
Earning his PGA Tour card in his hometown of Portland at last was an emotional experience. When asked if he felt a bit like a seventh-year senior in college finally graduating, he smiled and said, “I’m Van Wilder,” referencing the National Lampoon’s movie starring Ryan Reynolds.
In his rookie season last year, Harrington was runner up at the Houston Open, finished No. 98 in the FedEx Cup standings and earned just under $1 million. This season his best result is a tie for 14th at the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship, where he held a share of the first-round lead. On Wednesday, he received Tiffany cufflinks commemorating his first appearance at the Players from PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan.
“On paper it may look like I’m a 40-year-old first-time Players participant but I think my best stuff is still to come,” Harrington said.