Ireland's big three slip in world rankings
As yet there is no threat to their respective positions comfortably within the top 50 but the trend is less than favourable, with Harrington having gone out from 17th to 20th, Clarke from 18th to 25th and McGinley from 21st to 29th.
Harrington, in fact, was sixth after he won the Barclays Classic at Westchester last June but not a whole lot has gone right for him in the meantime. He has now completed four straight tournaments this year and performed steadily in each but without any great sign of inspiration.
He lost in the quarter-finals of the Accenture World Match Play in unfortunate circumstances to Davis Love III and having played himself to within four strokes of the halfway lead in his defence of the Honda Classic at the weekend, fell away with disappointing final rounds of 72 and 74 to drop back to a share of 16th.
Harrington shot four double bogeys at the Mirasol Country Club along with five bogeys for which he compensated with 15 birdies. He hit 58.9% of the fairways, averaged 304 yards off the tee and 29 putts and reached 62.9% of the greens in regulation.
Padraig is back home for a few days but returns to the States on Sunday next to prepare for the so called "fifth major", the Tournament Players Championship starting at Sawgrass on Thursday week. It's an event in which he has invariably done well in the past. He was second a couple of years ago, one shot behind the Australian winner Adam Scott, and in spite of shooting three double bogeys over the weekend which put paid to his chance in the Honda, is satisfied that his competitive edge is returning after his customary nine-week break.
He is 14th in the European Tour order of merit with a total of 276,112 points and also creeping closer to the business end of the Ryder Cup points tables.
He is up to 11th in the world list and 12th in the European. He is 41st in the US Tour order of merit with 354,588 points so far and after the Players Championship will take in the Bell South Classic in Atlanta the week before the US Masters at Augusta National.
Luke Donald, who performed so steadily to keep the Honda Classic trophy in European hands, is now up to sixth in the US money list with a total of $1.4 million (€1.17m) behind Rory Sabbatini, Geoff Ogilvy, David Toms and Tiger Woods, all four of whom have already topped the $2 million mark, and Chad Campbell, and has climbed to tenth in the world.
While Harrington takes this week off, Paul McGinley is heading all the way to Yalong Bay at Sanya on the southern Chinese island of Hainan for the TCL Classic. He is returning to the scene of one of his best-ever rounds - a closing 63 at the 2005 event before losing a dramatic play-off with England's Paul Casey.
"That 63 was one of the best rounds of my career considering that I had to shoot it to get into a play-off," he says.
"Scores like that tend to happen when you feel good on the course and that's exactly how I was. It's one of the best courses I have played for a long time. Losing the play-off wasn't quite as painful as it might normally have been, because I had had to shoot really low to get there in the first place.
"But no golfer ever likes finishing second and I'll be doing everything I possibly can to goone better this time. My game isn't exactly where I would like it to be at the moment but, hopefully all the hard work will be rewarded fairly soon."
MCGINLEY can take heart from his display at Yalong Bay a year ago. His brilliant final round included five consecutive birdies on the back nine as he charged up a crowded leaderboard to catch Casey. The pair finished the regulation four rounds tied on 22 under par before the Englishman prevailed on the second extra hole.
McGinley is one of 15 players who have won a European Tour event (including defending champion Casey and current order of merit leader David Howell) taking part in the TCL Classic as the tournament cements its status as one of China's leading annual sports events. The only other Irishman in the field is Dubliner Stephen Browne.
Meanwhile, Darren Clarke has winged his way back across the Atlantic for this week's Bay Hill Classic in Orlando, Florida, having withdrawn after the first round at Doral a couple of weeks ago because of a wrist injury which he attributed to overdoing things on the practice range.
Depending on a full recovery and, of course, the wellbeing of his wife Heather, who bravely continues her battle with cancer, Darren will remain in the States for the Players and after that will concentrate on a week of hard practice prior to Augusta. A notable absentee at Bay Hill is the defending champion Kenny Perry, who has just undergone an operation on his knee but is confident of making it back in time for the Masters.
: 14th, Padraig Harrington 276,112; 45th Darren Clarke 103,078; 51st Damien McGrane 90,466; 60th Paul McGinley 77,689; 61st Peter Lawrie 77,632; 83rd Graeme McDowell 57,296; 103rd Gary Murphy 36,774; 116th David Higgins 29,198; 213th Michael Hoey 1,921.
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