Harrington continues in rich vein of form
Harrington, the in-form player coming into this PGA Tour finale at East Lake Golf Club following five top-10 finishes in five starts, is still seeking a first victory of a year that had until the first week of August looked like a write off.
And after a strong opening 67 last night, that first win of 2009 could well come in the most lucrative of events, for in addition to a $1.35m first prize, a victory for Harrington in tandem with a scenario involving a third place for Tiger Woods would net him a $10m bonus as the FedEx Cup champion.
Harrington would be the first to say that there is a long way to go yet before such conditions become a consideration in Georgia but starting the second round this evening handily placed on the leaderboard will be a step in the right direction.
The Dubliner, sixth in the FedEx Cup standings at the start of play, was last night one shot off the first-round clubhouse lead held at four under by American Sean O’Hair but with standings leader Woods, for whom a victory at East Lake would guarantee him the FedEx Cup looming ominously.
Harrington had started strongly, reaching four under par at the halfway stage of his first round on the par-70, 7,154-yard course, which had been deluged with more than 11 inches of rain in the week before the tournament began.
There was no hint of such a downpour as the 30-man field got their opening rounds away with Harrington the only player to finish in the top 10 in each of the three preceding FedEx Cup play-off events and one of just two players to have posted sub-70 scores in the first round in each of the first those three play-offs. The other one, though, was O’Hair, lying seventh in the standings and who had also reached the turn at four under, including a 56-foot birdie putt at the fourth, with Open champion Stewart Cink having already returned to the clubhouse with a three-under 67.
Harrington had opened with birdies at the par-four first, third, fifth and seventh holes to reach the turn in 31 and was trundling along solidly as he closed in on the clubhouse before a mini-disaster struck at the par-five 15th.
He found a right green-side bunker with his approach shot but failed to escape the sand trap at the first attempt before splashing out to 19 feet from the hole.
The par putt rolled 10 inches past the pin and Harrington, with the second quizzical look of the hole, took his first bogey of the day.
The good news was that Harrington was driving the ball well, finding 11 of 14 fairways, which was more than could be said for world number one Woods, whose accuracy over the first 15 holes was just 46.15%.
It was a typically up and down day for the American, a birdie at the third followed by bogeys at six and eight before the five-time winner this year clicked into the groove and sent down five birdies in the next seven holes to reach three under with two play.
Open champion Cink, who began the tournament with only a slim chance of landing the big bonus prize from 26th place in the standings, had been first to hit the front at four under after nine holes in his home state, having driven his kids to school on his way to the course.
One birdie followed on the back nine, book-ended with bogeys at the 13th and 15th holes and Cink reached the clubhouse with a 67 at three under.
Fellow 2009 major winner Lucas Glover, the US Open champion, finished a shot further back with a 68 with South Africa’s Retief Goosen and Americans Dustin Johnson and Steve Marino carding 69s.
England’s Luke Donald, the only other European in the field besides Harrington, carded a level-par 70, to join a large group including Americans Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk and Zach Johnson.
A win for Woods, Stricker, second in the standings, and Furyk, third, would guarantee them the FedEx Cup, as it would fourth-placed Johnson and fifth place Heath Slocum, who has much work to do to make that a reality after an opening 73.
The odds on Phil Mickelson doing likewise were already long but a quadruple bogey eight at the par-four 14th lengthened them as the world number two slipped to a 73.
Of the other of the year’s major winners, US PGA champion Y E Yang finished at one over with Masters winner Angel Cabrera a shot worse off following a 72.
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