A day for patience and tenacity as Lahinch bares its teeth to the stars
After a day of glorious sunshine and low scoring on Thursday, the early starters yesterday were greeted by a decidedly different golf challenge. A cool morning mist and trickier pin positions meant a very challenging first nine holes.
In times gone by this would have been a day that the tournament leader and three-time major champion Pádraig Harrington would have relished. It was a morning where he knew another great performance could have separated himself from the chasing pack.
Four bogeys over a tough opening seven holes quickly put paid to that idea and for a while one felt that it could get even worse. But I was impressed by the way Harrington used all of his experience and guile to return an eventual score of 73. As much as Harrington will be smarting at his performance, he will be buoyed by the knowledge that he can still have a say over the final 36 holes if he can get his game back on track.
Looking back on his round, he may well reflect on his level of commitment on those difficult first seven holes when it was difficult to flight the ball in the cooler wet crosswind conditions and to control a wet ball.
Of greater concern will be the fact that Harrington’s consistent miss yesterday was left. The pressure of leading a tournament can do that to you but barring any underlying injury, it should be an easy fix. A better posture and a bigger turn on his backswing will give him the necessary room to start the ball more consistently down his target line.
He also struggled with his short game, looking decidedly tentative on the putting green. This is more of a psychological issue than anything else but now that he is chasing rather than leading, let’s hope that his short game will once again give him the necessary platform to be competitive over the weekend.
Of the other early starters yesterday, it wasn’t hard to be truly impressed by the performance of Northern Ireland’s Cormac Sharvin. After such a good opening round of 66 on Thursday, it would have been easy for him to get over excited about the potential opportunities that may arise from a great performance in the Irish Open but yesterday he proved that there were indeed good scores to be had out on the course as long as you understood when to attack and when to stay patient.
Three birdies and two bogeys for a 69 in the toughest of the weather conditions suggest that he is a man very comfortable in his surroundings. Exciting times indeed.
For those informed players starting the afternoon round, they would have understood that an extra club of wind had made all the difference to the playing difficulty of the course. Good course management was the order of the day and that meant that they had to grind out a result over the opening seven holes by being fully committed to their targets, especially the tough crosswind tee shots as well as the shots from the wet wispy rough into the tougher pin positions.
Most of all they needed to be patient and once out of position be prepared to take your medicine.
Shane Lowry would have been relishing his test starting out. The biggest question was whether or not he could keep his concentration and stay patient over those opening seven holes, to give himself a chance to post a competitive score.
Over those holes he struck the ball beautifully but his putting looked strangely tentative. He made his first mental mistake on the eighth hole to make a bad bogey and then when he failed to birdie the ninth and followed it with untidy bogeys on the tenth and the 11th, his body language suggested that it might all get away from Lowry once more. To his credit he rallied over the closing stretch but he will be bitterly disappointed not to have made further inroads into that leaderboard.
All in all the next couple of days promise more outstanding golf and the fact that that there is significant Irish interest, spearheaded by Sharvin, guarantees great crowds. At the top end of the leaderboard Zander Lombard and Eddie Pepperell may well have different agendas this weekend but such is the calibre of this Lahinch challenge nothing can be taken for granted.
From my perspective, I hope that the tournament committee stay brave and continue to challenge the field with strong pin positions and that the wind continues to sufficiently blow to keep the players honest. Over these past two days, Lahinch has more than held its own against a strong field.
More of the same please.
