Harrington must avoid costly blunders

CONSIDERING his ongoing tendency to run up large numbers at one or more holes in almost every event he contests, Pádraig Harrington can hardly be looking forward to the Tournament Players Championship at the water-strewn Sawgrass course in Jacksonville, Florida.

The reigning British Open and US PGA champion played some beautiful golf in each of his last two tournaments, the Masters at Augusta in early April and the Quail Hollow Championship in Charlotte, only to spoil it all with some dreadful blunders.

True, he did have to accept a freakish penalty shot when his ball was blown by a gust of wind on the 15th green in the second round of the Masters after he had addressed it a few moments earlier. But there was no excuse for the quadruple bogey on the third day that effectively ended whatever hope he had of completing the much publicised “Paddy Slam”. The following day he ran up a seven at the ninth although there was the extenuating circumstance of a two-shot penalty when his tee ball stayed up in one of the towering pines to the left of the fairway.

Still, that was a staggering seven strokes gone in two holes and no matter how good a golfer you may be, it is not possible to win tournaments at this level with numbers like those.

Even worse was to follow in Quail Hollow on Thursday and Friday last. Four under for his first round after 16, Harrington found water off the tee at the short 17th and it cost him a three-over par six. After that, he drove into a creek at the 18th and the outcome was a double bogey six and a one over par round of 73. On Friday, three more sixes appeared on his card including the now almost inevitable double at the 10th, his opening hole.

It all led to his third missed cut in eight starts in the US this year. It’s a far cry from 2008 when he was voted the PGA Tour Player of the Year. It will be pointed out that he actually twice doubled the 18th and still won the Open for the first time at Carnoustie in 2007. To retain any hope of getting his hands on the claret jug, however, he needed to get up and down for six at the 72nd before going on to memorably defeat Sergio Garcia in a play-off.

Harrington is becoming a little too accident prone for comfort and the Sawgrass course with its infamous “island” 17th green, is nowhere to go in a situation like that. There’s an awful lot more water than that on the course, most notably at the 16th and 18th, so this week is going to be a severe test not only of the Irishman’s shot making but also of his nerve. Falling back from third in the world rankings where he stood at the beginning of the year to seventh where he is now tells its own story of how slowly Harrington has begun what seemed like such a highly promising year.

While he can draw some comfort from the fact that he came second in 2003 and 2004 at Sawgrass, there is also the down side of having played very poorly there for the past couple of years. The field for the “fifth major” is one of the strongest of the year and contains two other Irishmen, Rory McIlroy, who celebrated his 20th birthday yesterday, and Graeme McDowell. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson join defending champion Sergio Garcia. As always, Woods starts an almost unbackable favourite but he has not recorded a top-10 finish in the event since his victory seven years ago.

Back in Europe and just a week before the 3 Irish Open gets under way at Baltray, the home player in fine form right now is 35-year-old Dubliner Peter Lawrie. Having endured a low key start to the campaign, he came from virtually nowhere on the final day in windy Korea to tie for eighth.

He then made the long, tiring journey to PGA Catalunya in northern Spain to defend his Spanish Open title and what a magnificent job he made of it. A share of third place was worth a tidy €112,600 and moved him up to 37th in the Race to Dubai European Tour order of merit with a total of €269,286.

For now anyway, Lawrie is very much on track for the season-ending dollar-fest in the Gulf along with the five other Irish in the all-important top 60: Rory McIlroy (fourth, €938, 234), Graeme McDowell (40th, €255,514), Gareth Maybin (41st, €251, 905), Pádraig Harrington (43rd, €247,508) and Damien McGrane (44th, €234,434).

The Irish in Turin this week are Darren Clarke, Maybin, Gary Murphy and Jonathan Caldwell. The Seniors Tour is in Majorca where the Irish competing are Eamonn Darcy, Des Smyth, Denis O’Sullivan, Eddie Polland and Jimmy Heggarty.