Padraig’s swing and misses

PADRAIG Harrington jointly led a field that included two of the game’s top three players and a host of other celebrated golfers in the Buick Classic at Westchester on Sunday - and still claimed that he had played poorly throughout the tournament!

He regaled the US press with his travails in the immediate aftermath of losing out in the play-off to winner Sergio Garcia and Rory Sabbatini and wasn’t for changing his tune when he arrived at Shinnecock Hills yesterday for the US Open, which begins on Thursday.

Harrington was far from down in the dumps - indeed he had a bounce in his step, wore that familiar smile, and did not dismiss the possibility of again figuring in the shake-up come Sunday evening.

“It was a funny week because I swung the club really poorly and was never under any pressure because of that”, he argued. “I kind of expected to hit bad shots so everything was a bonus and because of that, it is very disappointing that the putt to win the tournament didn’t drop.”

When I tried to reconcile what he was saying with the fact that he had tied with two others at the top of the leader board after 72 holes of a major US Tour event he didn’t relent: “I swung the club appallingly. As I said to Ronan (Flood, his new caddy), my best break of the week was that I hit it in the woods at the fourth hole of the third round and I was able to chip it out. I should have been back to the tee box.

“I’m not saying I was lucky, I took my chances. I scrambled well. I hit some good shots, it was just that I hit some woeful shots as well. Why? I spoke to Bob (Torrance, his coach) and it seems I wasn’t rotating enough, that I was crossing the line a bit. It’s something I had been doing for a long time and the area of my game I’ve worked on for the last five years. It just crept in last week. A lot of the shots were out of the nose of the club.”

His share of second place at Westchester sees Harrington improve from 8th to 7th in the world rankings (Garcia has jumped to 10th) and was worth another $462,000 to his bank balance. However, he insists it means nothing more than disappointmentrather than another indication of how eminent a player he has now become.

“I feel nothing but disappointment”, he replied when asked how significant to his career was a best ever finish in a US Tour tournament. “I take no confidence from it, it’s another second place finish and all they do is add up”, he groaned. As for his mental frame of mind going into the season’s second major, he put an interesting slant on things.

“It goes exactly back to what I said about the Buick”, he insisted. “You’re under a lot more pressure when you think things are right. When you think you have it, that’s when it’s really tough because you’re trying to hold on to it. I don’t have it at the moment, I just have to go and find it.”

Bob Torrance never travels to the States, which sounds a drawback to most people. But Harrington dismissed suggestions that he would benefit from the Scot’s presence: “There is no way I could spend three days working on my swing. It’s too late. Either I’m going to find it or it’s too late. I’m wise enough to know that I could have Bob here and be swinging the club great by Thursday but my mind would be frazzled. The swing isn’t everything as I proved last week.”

One thing is for sure, he won’t be experimenting with contact lenses over the next few days. He believes a brief flirtation with them may have had something to do with his troubles at Westchester: “I was never swinging the club better than last Tuesday, the day I put in the lenses. It was the first time I ever wore them and whether they changed my perception, I don’t know.

“They weren’t normal lenses. They were for stigmatism in my eyes and I took them out after 14 holes. But it was on Tuesday I started hitting hook shots and it got worse and worse throughout the week.”

Finishing second for the 23rd time in his professional career has only added to Harrington’s sense of frustration. Although he will have happy memories of that remarkable bladed chip at the 72nd, the putt that slid by at the 18th will give him nightmares for many a day.

“It was about a six footer down quite a steep slope. The way I looked at it was that it was going to break heavily at the start and straighten out a little bit at the end something like a double-breaker. I went a cup outside the lip, tiddled it off, it broke nice early on and when it got to about a foot short of the hole, it was about an inch right and needed to keep breaking and it didn’t While it was never going in the centre of the hole, it certainly looked to have a great chance of going in the right edge. The fact that it was a well struck putt only makes it worse. I’d much prefer to hit a bad putt and hole it.”

As for his downfall at the second tie hole, he agreed that he probably got a little bit over-confident with the birdie chance.

“I got a bit aggressive and knocked it eight feet by. I had seen putts earlier break in different directions and I just wasn’t too confident of the line and didn’t hit a great putt as a result.”

Darren Clarke missed the cut at Westchester where he stayed on to practice before travelling on to Shinnecock on Sunday night.

“From tee to green, I wasn’t too bad, but on the greens, I was shocking,” he said.