Harrington plays down his chances

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON has played down his chances in today’s BellSouth Classic in Atlanta after making changes to his clubs.

Harrington is competing in a fifth BellSouth and his first since finishing fourth and three strokes behind American Zach Johnson in 2004.

Harrington arrived in Atlanta on Sunday night after missing the cut in last week’s Players Championship, a result that saw Harrington drop one spot to 25th on the world rankings. However, the extra time has led to Harrington searching for answers after last week’s scores of consecutive 73s and he responded to a first missed cut this season by changing the grips on all his clubs.

“I did a bit of fiddling on my game here on Monday, Tuesday and now Wednesday that I probably would not have done had I not missed the cut last week,” said Harrington. “I changed all the grips on my clubs, back to the kind I was using before the start of the year. Basically, I don’t put the grips on square, but I have not been very comfortable over the ball because of that so I have gone back to putting them on open. It has been three days now as I am having them done one at a time. It will take a while to get them all on and I can guarantee there will not be one club that won’t be right this week.”

But whilst Harrington is looking to improve on his previous BellSouth best of fourth and secure a third US Tour victory, he admitted ‘fiddling’ with grip changes has now distracted him from that hopeful winning goal.

“I was thinking that this week could be a competitive week but because I missed the cut last week, it’s turned more into a ‘get things right week’, he said. “That is not how I intended this event to be, because I figured having done well in the past here, it would be a week to play well. It’s just that I know from experience undertaking these changes that it will a few competitive rounds to get everything neatly sorted. So the goal now is to play all four rounds and get in some competition before Sunday afternoon. Harrington will play the opening two rounds in the company of England’s Luke Donald and South African Retief Goosen teeing off 1.20pm Irish time.

Graeme McDowell was one of the last to register for the event, having arrived late yesterday morning from Orlando where the Portrush golfer had been competing in the Tavistock Cup.

McDowell is desperate to end a miserable run of five missed cuts, among them being knocked out in the opening round of February’s Accenture Match-Play Championship.

But the double European Tour winner can take some heart after defeating two-times former US Open winner, Lee Janzen in his second round Tavistock Cup match on Tuesday.