The 2002 USPGA Championship at Hazeltine National evokes many memories.

Rich Beem doing that weird hula-hula dance on the 18th green after tapping in the short putt which sealed a stunning victory over Tiger Woods.

Or Padraig Harrington nearly having his head torn off by his Aussie chiropractor, Dr Dale Richardson, immediately after the Dubliner had hit his opening tee shot in Saturday's third round.

Harrington's neck had gone into spasm on the practice range not long before his scheduled appearance on the first tee, giving Richardson no chance to free-up some badly-seized muscles.

The patient needed further treatment, but still had to strike his ball down the first fairway at the appointed time to stay in the tournament. Only when he put that first shot into play could Harrington be afforded a few minutes to get the injury sorted out.

So, under the gaze of millions of TV viewers, Harrington somehow hit his drive. Then one of the most unusual sideshows in Major Championship history began as the Irishman, sitting on his golf bag in the middle of Hazeltine's first fairway, had his head rotated through an excruciatingly painful-looking series of movements that would not have looked out of place in the wrestling ring.

Frankly, Harrington's tortured expressions were enough to deter anyone from trying out these movements at home, but Richardson's energetic efforts certainly paid off as his client not only completed the tournament, but somehow eked out a place in the top-20.

Seven years later, as the USPGA returns to Hazeltine this week, you sincerely hope Harrington will spend Friday night of tournament week engaged in less physically demanding pursuits than the virtual boxing game which, allegedly, threw his neck muscles out of synch on that occasion.

The Irishman wasn't the only one who had to endure pain in the full glare of publicity that weekend in Minnesota, as Tiger chose his end-of-tournament press conference at Hazeltine to signal the end of his long, close and immensely fruitful partnership with his coach Butch Harmon.

To this day, I believe the question which gave Woods the opportunity to put his 'split' with Harmon into the public domain that afternoon was 'planted', which is a regular plot across a wide range of public forums, from media briefings to question time in parliament.

clarify

"There have been some things said and written about your relationship with Butch. Could you just clarify, has it changed at all?" said the questioner, leaving those of us who hadn't seen the writing on the wall or, for that matter, in any newspaper or magazine, scratching our heads.

"Yes it has changed," said Tiger, adding he no longer needed Harmon's services as much as he used to, effectively bringing to a close a famous chapter in his career and, temporarily at least, ending an era in modern golf.

Later that evening, as I stood at reception in the main tournament headquarters hotel on the outskirts of Minneapolis, I bumped into Harmon as he checked out and prepared to head for the airport to catch a flight home.

Nowadays, he insists he was not wounded by this parting, but Harmon cut a distinctly sad and lonely figure that evening as he hauled his suitcase out of the hotel door, plainly no longer a favoured courtesan at golf's Camelot.

Harmon had worked for 10 years with Woods. He helped transform a toothy youngster named Eldrick into the rampaging Tiger who changed forever the nature of golf with his breakthrough victory at the 1997 US Masters.

Significantly, Harmon was urged by Tiger at the end of that year to oversee a revamp of his swing, leading to a fallow period for Woods at the Majors until the 1999 USPGA at Medinah, when he claimed the first of a mind-blowing string of seven victories out of the 11 he played up to and including the 2002 US Open at Bethpage.

It would take a Saturday afternoon tempest at Muirfield to blow Woods off course at that year's British Open, giving Ernie Els the opportunity to win his third (and most recent) Major title.

Though Rich Beem pinched the Wanamaker Trophy from under Tiger's nose at Hazeltine, Woods still was viewed as virtually invincible at the Majors, making his decision to dispense with Harmon and the subsequent series of 10 successive Grand Slams without a victory seem all the more astonishing.

As this famine stretched from 2003 to '04, Woods was questioned ever more vigorously at each Major about the 'Tiger Slump', a phrase adapted from his 'Tiger Slam', the unique achievement of holding all four titles simultaneously through the 2001 US Masters.

Even after his working relationship with Hank Haney was officially made public early in 2004 (insiders reveal that he had started helping Woods revamp his swing plane long before that), Tiger's career appeared to be in free-fall.

After winning the Accenture Match Play that February, Woods went nine months without a victory, surrendering top spot in the World Rankings to Vijay Singh that September. He then dropped to third behind Els the following month, only reclaiming second spot by winning the Dunlop Phoenix in Japan.

In all, Singh would spend 26 weeks at No 1 before Woods motored back to the summit on the back of long-awaited PGA Tour victories at the 2005 Buick Invitational in Torrey Pines and Ford Championship at Doral, followed soon after by his first Major title in 34 months at Augusta National.

So, what prompted Tiger at the height of his power in 2002 to don sackcloth and ashes and dismantle his swing?

Simple, the search for perfection. In the words of an insightful article in 'Golf Digest' at the dawn of the 'Third Act' in Tiger's career back in the spring of 2005, they described Woods as "an obsessive-compulsive in a never- ending quest for improvement. Even during his three-a-half-year run of the most dominant golf ever played, from 1999 to 2002, he was nettled that he had to battle a lifelong flaw of uncoiling his lower body ahead of his upper body on the downswing, which resulted in the club's becoming "stuck" behind him.

"After Woods's epic 2000 season, during which he won the US Open by 15 strokes and the British Open by eight, he and Harmon, had concentrated largely on the maintenance of synchronising Woods's hips and arms. Student and teacher split in part because Woods wanted to find a lasting fix. When he failed to win a major in 2003 he became all the more determined to, as he puts it, 'own' his swing."

When Woods began working with Haney, the long-time coach of Tiger's friend, mentor and constant practice round partner, Mark O'Meara, the focus was "on building a more connected swing during which Woods would maintain the same plane on the backswing and downswing."

Of whom does this 'obsessive compulsive' remind you? Harrington, of course. Okay, he doesn't seem as driven for recognition as 'the owner of his own swing' and one cannot envisage the day when Bob Torrance, the most revered coach in golf, would not have a seat on the board of Team Harrington.

Yet very few sportspeople would view the achievement of their greatest success as the very motivation to try and improve, as Harrington was moved to do this season after winning three Major titles in 13 months. Harrington is wired differently from the vast majority of us, who live by the code 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' ... and it puts him in the same bracket as Tiger Woods.

For sure, golfers are always changing their swings, but it's usually done out of necessity. For example, Phil Mickelson had won three Majors when, in 2007, he left coach Rick Smith and asked Harmon to work on his game ... but this was prompted by his horrible demise on the final hole at the 2006 US Open at Winged Foot.

Most people readily understood when Mickelson decided to seek a fresh perspective and his bid for more efficient control of his talent, but with Tiger and, this year, Harrington, they were stumped by the desire for change.

It took mental strength over the past eight months for Harrington to set aside results and doggedly search for a solution to an imperfection in his game which had niggled at him for three years.

Every press conference or chance encounter with well-meaning golf enthusiasts was repetitive, with the Dubliner able to anticipate the questions and mouth his own off-pat responses like a frequent Mass-goer, only there was little to uplift the spirit in this liturgy.

Not for one minute would anyone offer Harrington as Tiger's equal as a prolific winner or in terms of his impact on the game. Yet they certainly share the same desire to achieve perfection and solve the perennial riddles of the swing and it is this Hoganeqsue quality, this bloody-mindedness which has helped establish the Irishman as Tiger's greatest rival in golf right now.

The way the Dubliner won those two Majors back-to-back last summer -- the stellar quality of his golf on British Open Championship Sunday at Birkdale and his wild-eyed determination the following month at Oakland Hills, made one yearn for the day when he and Tiger would go eye-to-eye on the final day at a Major.

So far, circumstance has prevented this from happening. Woods might have won four PGA Tour events since his return from injury last February, but, to date, the adjustments he had to make to take account of his 'new' left leg meant his game was not quite ready for the rigours of Major Championship golf at Augusta, Bethpage Park or Turnberry.

However, in recent weeks it has looked as if eight agonising months of rehab following last summer's reconstructive surgery on his left knee, plus half a year of building the joint back to full strength on the US circuit, might be about to pay-off on the Grand Slam stage.

Woods judges each season on his performance at the Majors and will be grimly determined to avoid drawing a blank at all four in 2009, something which has happened only three times since his breakthrough at The Masters in 1997. Now that's a lot of pressure.

Harrington, meanwhile, walked with a confident swagger once again at the Bridgestone Invitational as he marched into yesterday's final round confrontation with Tiger before the two of them tee it up together with Rich Beem on Thursday and Friday in the first two rounds of the US PGA at Hazeltine National.

What a wonderful 'draw'! Seven years after Beem's famous victory at Hazeltine, the stars really appear to be falling into place for another apocryphal US PGA Championship in Chaska.

Americans have waited for 'El Tigre Blanco', Mickelson, to throw the gauntlet down to Woods at the Majors in the way Nicklaus did with Palmer and Watson did with Nicklaus.

Yet, with all due respect to seasoned warriors like Els, Retief Goosen or Angel Cabrera, or ailing pretenders like Sergio Garcia or Adam Scott, Harrington's pursuit of perfection over the past eight months suggests that he is the one most likely to draw the sword from the stone.

- Karl MacGinty