Harrington faced with pregnant pause

IT’S with an air of considerable uncertainty that Pádraig Harrington enters his fifth US PGA Championship at Oak Hill tomorrow.

He accepts that his preparation for the season's fourth and final major championship has been far from ideal a missed cut at the Nissan Irish Open followed by two idle weeks. And looming over everything is the impending arrival of his first child, due on Monday but now looking likely to go at least a few days beyond that. That's why he's here and not at home with Caroline, although he makes no secret of his belief that her enforced absence is a further reason why he is at a disadvantage this week.

"Caroline missed the recent British Open and that was the only major that she wasn't at my side," he said. "Of course I miss her unbelievably. She is a massive support for me. It's nice to have somebody with a semi-independent view of my round. I have a biased view, my caddy has a biased view but Caroline is nothing if not practical. She will always have a clearer view. I might claim to have played nicely and she will listen and then she asks how it all added up to a 74 or whatever."

The Harringtons spend "five or ten minutes discussing each round. We talk it over and after that it's done for the day and we move on to a different subject altogether. I know she'll be here in spirit this week and of course we will take as much time talking things over on the phone as if she had been here. She is due on Monday. She went to the doctor on Friday before I came out and was told it would probably run late. There was no point in waiting at home. We decided the worst thing would be if I was sitting at home all the way through the PGA and nothing happened. We are taking a slight chance, but that's the way it has to be. There's nothing guaranteed. Obviously if I get the call on Saturday and I'm doing well in the tournament, I'll be here on Sunday. We're relying on how Caroline feels and what the doctor feels about when it's going to happen."

Much has been made recently of an apparent loss of weight and it's a subject that may be getting under the normally unflappable Harrington's skin just a little bit. When it was put to him yesterday that he looked "somewhat gaunt," Pádraig immediately retorted: "Some would say I look fit. I am at my proper weight of 12 stone 4 lbs."

Candid as ever, Pádraig admits he doesn't quite know what to expect this week. Like just about everybody else, he likes the golf course but knows that he hasn't been competitive of late. "I lack the mental sharpness at present and it's most important to get that right and a tournament between the Irish Open and now would have helped," he accepts. "The way to get over that is to practice well. This course is playing so long after three weeks of solid rain in this area. I didn't get an inch of run out there. The 18th (a par four of 482 yards) was the toughest. I hit a really good drive and still had a four iron of 205 yards to the flag." In spite of a relatively barren spell since his victory in the TPC of Europe in May, Harrington remains the 9th ranked golfer in the world, a position he needs to protect this week with at least a top ten finish. He is fascinated by the list of recent major winners Rich Beem, Mike Weir, Jim Furyk and Ben Curtis since Tiger Woods's last success in the 2002 US Open. "I wasn't familiar with Ben but I'm sure he had learned how to win somewhere along the line and essentially these were guys who were assured of their own games," he argued. "Week in, week out, they are not the glamorous players on tour. They are not the people making the headlines. They are comfortable doing their own thing and that has to be the best way of trying to win majors. When they get into all that pressure in a major, they are able to keep going in that frame of mind and not get distracted.

"I wish I had as solid a game as them. It is certainly somewhere I would try and move my game to. They are proving that it's not necessarily power hitting that overcomes a golf course. The more flamboyant players are expected to win and coming into a major, it's difficult for them to do that." Quite obviously, Tiger Woods fits ideally into the latter category and Harrington is one of those who believes attitudes towards his one time "invincibility" have changed appreciably.

"Just as he's doing his thing, you're doing your thing," he reasoned. "Before there was an attitude that you had to play really well to beat Tiger but now players are thinking, I'll just play my game and let him play well if he wants to beat me. They are putting the emphasis back on Tiger whereas before Tiger had the emphasis on the opposition. They are saying, if he plays great and he wins, fine, but let's see him do it rather than the other way around. It is being put up to him more and more."