Sharks and Nearly Man dead in water

ON the lightest possible level I have to begin by saying that sales of a certain butter substitute must be going through the roof this week, especially among the golfing fraternity.

It would appear that not alone does it lower your cholesterol — it also dramatically lowers your score. Ever since Pádraig Harrington began to appear on TV screens extolling its virtues, he was gone from strength to strength.

He was the Nearly Man for years, was he not? He was the perennial best man on the big occasions, when the trophies and the titles were wed to other players who finished just ahead of him. We used to sigh on the last day on the final stretches when the likeable Dublin native with the strangely shy smile and diffident manner came up just short. How many times during that period of his career did he finish Number Two? I don’t have the stats but it was very often. Yes, in those years he was the Nearly Man . One remembers the film The Cincinatti Kid, in which the old card sharp said: “There’s gotta be a Number Two man”.