Harrington back on course

Denmark’s Thomas Bjorn is consoled by USA’s Davis Love III after being pipped by a shot on the final round of the British Open.

By Charlie Mulqueen

PADRAIG HARRINGTON was again reminded yesterday of his cardmarking bloomer at the Benson & Hedges International three years after a similar horror befell Englishman Mark Roe at Royal St Georges on Saturday.

Before going through the ringer, however, the Irishman compiled a best of the week 69 and in spite of his own doubts, there are very definite signs his game is returning to something like its best after a few weeks of disappointing results.

Harrington finished in a share of 22nd on seven over par, added stg£32,916 to his bank balance and reported: “That was better, I played quite well. There was some nice golf and some erratic golf so all in all it was a nice round of golf. This doesn’t mean I’ve turned the corner, though. It’s much easier when you’re down at the end of the field. That makes for a different focus and produces a different score. You’re trying to shoot the best score you can, just to play well. I was having a go at the pins today to see how many birdies I could make.”

Harrington bogeyed the second but then had a run of four successive birdies, laced with putts of 20, 15 and 12 feet and a near ace at the fifth where his seven-iron approach pulled up stone dead. He had every chance of making it five gains when he stood over a six iron to the long seventh but it ran through the green and he couldn’t get up and down.

“Missing from four feet there was a pity and it certainly stopped me,” he admitted. “Overall, I had a lot of good chances and it could have been two or three shots better, no more.”

And, after that, the conversation inevitably turned to the card-marking mix-up on Saturday that could well have cost Mark Roe the Open Championship.

Harrington was involved in a similar golfing disaster in 2000. Having suffered badly for weeks after the incident almost certainly deprived him of that year’s Benson & Hedges International, Harrington got over it and has long been applauded for the way he accepted his misfortune.

“When it happened to me, I sat down afterwards and tried to work how it could possibly happen again,” he related. “I knew it could happen again so I actually sign the top of my card on top of my name. If I do that, then it’s my card. I sign my signature at the top and the bottom. I have my policy to deal with it and maybe

everybody else should use that policy. Once it happened to me, I just sat down and tried to cover all options for the future but I’m not saying it won’t happen to me again. It’s an easy mistake, I’m sure it has happened many times and been spotted and many when it hasn’t. Unfortunately, it happened yesterday and wasn’t spotted.

“I have a lot of sympathy for Mark. He could have won the Open. He mustn’t second guess himself. He mustn’t apportion any blame to himself. He’s coming to Portmarnock and this week he’s playing and he should come. Very much like me at the time, it’s not that he did anything wrong. It just happened. Nobody is to blame. It could happen anywhere, any time. It’s not a blame or responsibility issue. It’s one of those accidents where nobody is at fault. Nobody has caused it.

“You’d be nitpicking if you were going around your whole life worrying about little details. You just can’t do that. You’d have no life. You’d just go nuts. Imagine the stress you’d be putting yourself under. It may have cost Mark the Open but it’s a little thing in the context of every day we play golf. The R& A are responsible for golf all around the world. This tournament has to be run the same way. At the end of the day, the guy in the local club has to attest to his score. These people are running a far bigger show than just the Open Championship.”

Harrington played yesterday with Greg Norman, the 1993 champion here at St Georges, having previously partnered him at the exhibition to open the Norman designed links at Doonbeg 12 months ago. I wondered if he learned much from watching a master of links golf at close quarters.

“I enjoyed playing with him but I’d have to sit down and think about whether I learned anything from watching him,” he mused. “He doesn’t play very much nowadays and I think he has lost the spark a bit. He needs something special to get him going and Royal St Georges obviously does that. He can really play the golf, he hit some superb shots out there but he does need the motivation of a great golf course. Unless it looks good to his eye, the adrenalin won’t get going. It was great to see him like the challenge ahead of him.

“At the 11th, he missed the green right and had a tight shot off a down-slope over a bunker to a tight pin. He chipped a great shot. You could see he was delighted he played the shot well. This is what I need more in my game is these shots. We’ll have more of this at Portmarnock during the week and I’m looking forward to it.”

Did Harrington and Norman have a little side bet on the outcome of the match? “I didn’t but I think the caddies did,” he grinned. Norman “won”, 68 to 69, so the fiver at stake went to Tony Novarro rather than Dave McNeilly.