Country: Ireland
Age: 37
Caps: 4 (1999, 2002, 2004, 2006)
Ryder Cup record: W7 L8 H2
Padraig Harrington is the world's pre-eminent golfer in the absence of Tiger Woods and a serious heavyweight on the European team.
The Irishman has roared into the void left by the injured Woods, adding a second straight Open Championship and a USPGA crown for a total of three major titles in the space of 14 months.
Once the nearly man of golf, with a string of runner-up spots to his name, Harrington has cracked the code and is emulating the world number one as a winning machine.
Harrington went into the last Ryder Cup at the K Club as the local hero, with his face plastered everywhere from billboards to buses. He ended with a disappointing half a point from five matches, but this time around, the world number three will give his side a huge psychological boost and strike fear into the opposition.
In passing over Colin Montgomerie and Darren Clarke for his wildcard selections, captain Nick Faldo has made it clear that Harrington will be his on-course leader at Valhalla, though as Woods has shown with his mixed fortunes in the Ryder Cup, strokeplay excellence is not always a guarantee of matchplay success.
For Harrington, though, Europe's upsurge in recent years is down to more than the sum of the parts.
"All 12 of us compete against each other all the time during the year, and some of the guys are competing tooth-and-nail to get onto the team with other guys. There's a lot of competition there. But it all changes for some reason the week of the Ryder Cup," he said.
"We all pull together in Europe. There are many guys that make up a team, and yet often there are guys on that team that you might not have had dealings with or that speak a different language or struggle with English, but for the whole week, there is a bond there.
"It's an amazing feeling that week and an amazing tournament that creates it."
Harrington, the qualified accountant, will be hoping it all adds up to a fourth straight European win in Kentucky.
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