Padraig Harrington is best known to Baby Boomers and Gen Xers for back-to-back (British) Open Championship titles in 2007 and 2008 and for his victory at the 2008 PGA Championship.

Millennials and Gen Zs are more apt to recognize the three-time major champion these days from Paddy’s Golf Tips on YouTube.

Over the past six years, the 54-year-old Harrington — in the field at this week’s RBC Canadian Open field at TPC Toronto on a sponsor exemption — has built a global following with a series of game-improvement instructional videos for the golfing masses.

Since posting his first piece of content shot in his Dublin, Ireland, backyard during the pandemic, the PGA Tour Champions player has crafted 115 videos and built Paddy’s Golf Tips into a veritable microbrand with more than 203,000 YouTube subscribers. As I tap this out, the Irishman’s videos have been viewed exactly 17,639,823 times (and counting).

“It’s surprising that there are people that would know me from Paddy’s Golf Tips before anything else,” Harrington told me after a spirited contest against Haotong Li around TPC Toronto’s short-game facility on Wednesday. “It might not be the most accurate thing to tell you, but it’s out there. Half the people would tell me I remember when you won your majors and the other half would say I know you because I love Paddy’s Golf Tips. Yeah, it’s a surprise how it stands alone by itself.”

Simplicity is the hallmark of Paddy’s Golf Tips. While I’m not particularly fond of the term “dumb-down,” it’s actually a pretty apt description for Harrington’s approach to an otherwise complex and inherently complicated game for recreational players.

“I think 95 per cent of social media golf is for good players, people who play the game at a pretty decent level. The problem is 99 per cent of people aren’t elite players,” Harrington explained. “With my content you’ll never see me talking about being on plane or any technical stuff. I just want you to swing out to the right if you want to draw it and swing to the left if you want to fade it. There’s a million simple things that amateurs need. I’m not saying the stuff you see on Instagram or YouTube isn’t correct a lot of the time. It’s just not for the mass market.”

Harrington does not make Paddy’s Golf Tips a pillar of his business portfolio. While he could easily monetize his videos with advertisers and sponsorships, his only interest is the content creation.

“I don’t do a thing to commercialize it whatsoever. I don’t chase it. I love making it and I love putting it out there. We take some feedback, of course, and it’s all great, but seriously the only thing I’m interested in is the content,” he told me.

Harrington’s inspiration for what he puts out on YouTube is the pro-am partners he plays with on tour. Every one of them, he says, can be influential in an idea or even a series of tips like a recent one he called “How to Putt Like a Pro.” In the past two weeks, that Paddy’s tip has been viewed 36,972 times.

“I see stuff in those pro-ams all the time. I see it, then write it into my notes and just keep gathering ideas. That’s how I do it,” he said. “When I play those (pro-ams) I gather, gather, gather all the time. Look at it and say, yeah this is a great idea.”

Like the legendary Tommy Armour, also a winner of three majors plus the Canadian Open in 1927, 1930 and 1934, Harrington loves to teach. Despite a long senior-circuit career still ahead of him, it would hardly be a surprise to see Harrington follow in Armour’s footsteps. The Silver Scot taught at the Boca Raton Club in Florida from 1926 to 1955, charging $50 a lesson.

“Yeah, I love teaching,” he said. “And I’m quite the contrarian. I love telling people about the game. For example, my favourite tip at the moment is that if you’re a bad chipper, you have to learn to lift your head. People look at me and go what? Are you serious? But it’s true. Your head has to go up and back if you want to be a good chipper. Keep your head down when your weight goes back, you’ll stub the club in the ground. I love that tip.”

What about putting?

“Lots of things to putting. It’s up there on Paddy’s golf tips. If you want to be a good putter you have to take anything you like, it makes no difference what it is, and do it on every single putt. It’s familiarity and consistency that makes you a good putter. It’s like there’s been a million swing thoughts that have been used for putting that have all worked. And it’s the same in the long game when it comes to pressure. It’s that consistency that breeds familiarity and you trust it.”

Harrington was just warming up.

“Here’s another one,” he said. “Every amateur I play with is obsessed with turning and turning can’t be worse for you. It’s counterproductive for 99 per cent. If you’re an amateur golfer your shoulders need to be pretty square at impact. You want to keep your back to the target as long as you can. Most amateurs think you need to turn through and they overturn. They get way open with their shoulders at impact. Way, way open and you can’t swing the club from there. The club is coming in too steep, outside the line. Most amateurs think that what their body does the hands and arms will follow. The truth is if you concentrate on what your hands and arms are doing, your body will react.”

After a long day playing in the RBC Canadian Open pro-am, range prep and that short-game match against Li, Harrington had to get to physio, but he had one more Paddy’s Golf Tip to share.

“I’ll leave you this,” he said. “I’m the youngest of five boys. I love a good argument. I just think that, not elite players, but the masses, the people who come to golf and think it’s this sport where you keep your head down, your feet down, you swing slowly and you stay still. All four of those are horrific. They’re awful. Golf is an athletic sport where you swing a stick and you learn to get that stick matched up to the ball when you hit it. You don’t change the athletic motion. It’s the same athletic motion as swinging a baseball bat, a tennis racquet, throwing a ball or skipping a stone. We all can do it.”

And if you can’t do it, go to Paddy’s Golf Tips on YouTube and let Padraig Harrington show you how.