Rain delay suits kipping king Harrington

PADRAIG HARRINGTON put his time to good use at Celtic Manor when the rain came down on the Ryder Cup and play was suspended for seven hours and 18 minutes as he and Luke Donald played American rookies Bubba Watson and Jeff Overton.

“I slept, that’s all I did all day,” Harrington said. “Slept for about an hour and a half in the morning, an hour after lunch. “I knew that after the rain delay, we are going to play a lot of golf, going to be a lot of early mornings for the rest of the week. It was time to get the rest in as much as possible.”

There are good omens for the Irishman. He used a similar rain delay at Oakland Hills to good effect in 2008, emerging after a locker-room snooze for the final round of the US PGA, which sealed the third major victory of his career.