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But Harrington has become positively Woods-like on the greens. The bigger the putt, the more likely he is to make it. He did it again on 16, and Garcia made his short bogey putt. Again, they were tied. Curtis was also at two under.
Harrington hit first on 17, and flew his 5-iron straight at the pin, setting off a loud celebration when his ball settled eight feet behind the cup. Garcia answered with a shot to four feet left of the pin, detonating another wild celebration.
The players walked to the green and didn't know which ball was which. When Harrington realized he was away, he thought as Woods would: He had a chance to get in the hole first, and he did.
"If I holed this, I probably would win the PGA," he said. "If I missed, Sergio would probably win the PGA. So it was down to that. And I hit a lovely putt." Garcia pulled his four-footer, and the ball caught just a sliver of the left side of the cup. It was his first bad miss all day.
"I felt good with my game, I felt really good with my putting," Garcia said. "I'm sure you guys will find a way to switch it around, but you know I really felt like I putted great today and, you know, just a couple of putts didn't want to go in, but you can't do anything about that."
When the week began, it figured that a European would win, given Europe's stellar performance at the 2004 Ryder Cup, also held at Oakland Hills.
Harrington went 4-1-0 for that team, and Garcia 4-0-1. Still, it was shocking how much Sunday's final round resembled Sunday at the 2007 British Open at Carnoustie, where Harrington beat Garcia in a four-hole playoff. Even the cooler-than-average weather at Oakland Hills, a mixture of swirling winds, spitting rain and the occasional ray of sunshine, felt British.
"It was worse when I finished the Open Championship than right now," Garcia said. "I feel like, you know, to shoot 69-68 on the last two rounds at a major on a course like this, I think it's pretty positive."
Curtis, the forgotten man, earned a spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team with his tie for second place. Phil Mickelson made a run with birdies on the second, third and fourth holes to get to one over for the tournament, but bogeyed the eighth, 11th and 14th to shoot 70. The 38-year-old lefthander, the No. 2 player in the World Ranking, has now gone two years in a row without a major title.
Harrington ties Mickelson with three career majors and becomes a viable candidate for Player of the Year, an honor Woods seemed to have locked up despite only playing for the season's first six and a half months.
Like Woods, Harrington has arrived at a mentality, equal parts self-reliance and unwavering focus, that is particularly suited to major championship golf.
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