He recognized it as an intellectual and material fact but, like the accountant he might so easily have become, he couldn't quite accept it until he had seen it written down on a sheet of paper.

But that's Padraig Harrington all over. Sound, sensible, pragmatic. Oh yes, and the champion European Tour player of the season.

So that's why, after a missed par putt by Sergio Garcia left him home and hosed as the winner of the Order of Merit and standing in the clubhouse at Valderrama on Sunday being congratulated by hand-shakes and back-slaps from all parts, he still had to check it out for himself. Harrington is a guy who never, ever, takes anything for granted.

It's actually what makes him the golfer he is. He admitted as he reflected on a victory that he rates as second only to one of the four majors, that when he turned professional a decade ago, he would have been happy to be a journeyman pro, finishing 70th to 75th each year. Yes, you've got it -- humble and modest, too.

Yet, although he had only a moderate opinion of himself as a professional athlete it was the essential dichotomy that resides in his breast that has made him the player he now is. He didn't think he was any great shakes. But oh boy, did he ever want to be.

Those early years in the paid ranks were bright enough, but nowhere near as luminous as he wanted them to be. So he applied a relentless work ethic to everything he did. He needed to be as good as he could get.

That all-consuming streak of perfectionism was his most powerful ally and at once a potential downfall. He has always striven for more, going that one more step, one more mile, never satisfied, never admitting for a nano-second that what he had was actually pretty darned good.

When he was in his pomp in the mid-Nineties, Colin Montgomerie once observed: "Actually, I'm beginning to realize that I'm pretty good at this game." If only Harrington had had a similar level of self-awareness, it's a fair bet that what he finally managed on Sunday would not have been the first time he had achieved it.

Padraig Harrington with his wife, Caroline, and their son Patrick after winning the Order of Merit. (Getty Images)

For years he has very nearly been the man of the European Tour. Starting in 2001, he finished second, second, third and third in the money list. His finish at Valderrama was the 30th time he had finished second in a tournament. You don't get much nearer than that.

He is a living, breathing contradiction in terms, sometimes slow in the course of a round but machine-gun fast when talking about it afterwards.

He is a fascinating interview, constantly adjusting his thoughts, perpetually analyzing. He can be delighted with a 74 and downright miserable about a 67.

He has a rare gift for self-deprecation and, when in full flow, a habit of fixing his gaze on some nebulous point in the middle distance as if seeking inspiration from some invisible muse.

The next logical step for the Dubliner with the sailor's rolling gait would be success in a major. Not that he hasn't been close.

At the British Open in 2002 at Muirfield he came to the 72nd hole with a chance to win but bogeyed it. He did the same this year at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

He admits that his trio of bogeys left him as tired and deflated as he had ever been. On the positive side, it showed him beyond any remaining doubt that he could compete at the highest level.

At 35, he is in his prime. If he can only bring himself to accept that fact, there is no reason why he cannot go on to bigger and much better things.

It is, admittedly, true to say that he owed his triumph to the fact that Garcia had an ugly bogey on the last hole that dropped him back into a three-way tie with Harrington and Luke Donald, but that's the way golf is. Harrington has been the victim of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune more often than most. It was about time that Kismet came to his aid.

To see him playing a coruscating back nine on this final day of the European season, it seemed almost incredible that this was the man who only last month contributed a mere half-point from five games in his fourth Ryder Cup appearance.

There, on the outskirts of his home town, he was tentative and clearly out of sorts with his game. But such is the mettle of the man that a couple of weeks later he won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

It was that victory that propelled him into the thick of the Order of Merit battle with Paul Casey, David Howell and Robert Karlsson. It was to become the most thrilling end-of-season sequence in a decade.

It is with utter certainty that it can be said that Padraig Harrington is the happiest man in golf this week. He deserves it.