Harrington primes game for British assault

PADRAIG HARRINGTON may have taken the last two weeks off from competitive golf, but that doesn’t mean he was failing to prepare himself mentally and physically for arguably the most important month of his season.

He realised during his recent three-week stint in the United States that he needed a “different slant” on his gymnasium programme, a variation on what he’d had been doing.

“After three to six months, you are certain to get bored with what you’re doing. But this has nothing to do with feeling tired at the end of the US Open. I am still working on a little swing change, kind of breaking down a psychological barrier.

“There are three reasons I take two weeks off at a time; a), to work in the gym; b), to practice, with no pressure to play well tomorrow; c), to actually rest.”

As if to back up the third point, Harrington enjoyed a sun holiday on the Costa del Sol last week. He is now in serious battle mode for the Smurfit European Open, beginning at The K-Club on Thursday. He then misses out on the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond, before tackling the Open Championship and the Irish Open in successive weeks. He is regarded as a serious contender for all three events.

Never having seen the Royal St Georges links at Sandwich, Padraig nipped over to Kent for a couple of days recently and played 45 holes over the Open Championship venue. What he discovered didn’t surprise him and he also believes the course may well suit him.

“It’s very tricky and it will be hard to hit the fairways,” he said. “There is hardly a flat fairway on the course and, with the ball running thirty or forty yards, it won’t be easy to keep the ball out of the rough. There are two obvious ways of tackling the situation and I suspect a lot of the field will go with the driver and try to reach the greens with a wedge or nine iron rather than play an iron from the tee and then get left with a six iron from the fairway.

“The greens themselves are excellent, really good, but they haven’t had much rain in those parts and the rough was pretty patchy. It will be more a psychological battle than anything else. It will make for strong minds and, accordingly, will play to some of my strengths, because I don’t get too stressed about good and bad breaks.”

Three Opens have been held at St Georges in Harrington’s lifetime. Bill Rogers captured his one-and-only major there in 1981. Four years later, Christy O’Connor Junior set a first day course record of 64, but in the end Sandy Lyle won by a shot from Payne Stewart.

In 1993, Greg Norman came out on top for the first time. Whatever about the first,

Harrington remembers Norman’s victory easily and believes there’s a message to be learned from it.

“Norman won in a great battle on the final day from Faldo and Langer,” he mused. “None of them were especially long hitters, but they were all good thinkers. That’s what you need to be around this kind of links. The American guys won’t like it, just as they probably didn’t like it then. It will be linksy and bouncy and never fair. It tests your mental fortitude.

“There’s a bit of controversy over increasing the par from 70 (as it was in ’93 when Norman shot a total of 267, 13 under par) to 71. Apparently, they have added a few yards to one hole and called it a par five. But that makes absolutely no difference to the players, only to the club members, who are afraid that somebody will finish too many shots under par for their liking, and to the media, who like to like to dwell on how much we are under or over par.”

TIME was when Harrington played almost all of his golf by the sea. He enjoyed it very much, winning the Irish Close at Lahinch in 1995 and a West of Ireland at Rosses Point the previous year and also reaching the final of another Close at Portmarnock, two South of Irelands at Lahinch and two Norths at Royal Portrush.

“As professionals, we’ve gone away from all that and only rarely get a chance to play links golf,” he accepted. “It means that I am not now as good a chipper of the ball as when I was an amateur. Take Royal St Georges. They have cross bunkers at a few holes, which means they have to be cleared and, if you’re coming out of the rough, you won’t be able to stop the ball on the green, which means you’ll be chipping from the back and that will be crucial. Hopefully, once the European Open is over, I’ll get to working on that part of my game and also on hitting low shots, the kind of stuff I will be needing at both Royal St Georges and Portmarnock.”