Revitalised Harrington putts faith in St Jude

PHIL MICKELSON always plays the week before a major championship. Tiger Woods never does. That’s why Lefty will be in Memphis this week for the St Jude Championship and Tiger will be back home in Florida honing his swing and taking due care of wife Elin, who is expecting their first child in early July.

However, there is no doubt where their minds will be over the next few days. The US Open returns to Oakmont, Pittsburgh, next week and nowadays it’s all about majors for the gifted duo. By and large, the top players prefer not to play the week before the big ones and that’s one reason why the fields for this week’s tournaments in Memphis and Austria have failed to attract marquee names.

That won’t bother Padraig Harrington who left Dublin yesterday for his latest sortie in the US. He’ll be over there for three weeks, taking in Memphis, Oakmont and the Travellers Championship in Connecticut. After that, he hopes to have clinched his place in the lucrative Fed-Ex series in September having yesterday returned to 10th in the world rankings. It won’t come as much surprise that the Fed-Ex points list is currently headed by Woods and Mickelson followed by Vijay Singh and Zach Johnson. Luke Donald is the leading European in 11th place and Harrington is well inside the cut-off mark in 58th spot.