Harrington raises European hopes

Padraig Harrington has given Europe the perfect boost as they fly to the Ryder Cup this afternoon.

But even after becoming the third successive member of Bernhard Langer’s side to taste victory on the European Tour, the Dubliner still makes America favourites.

Harrington captured the German Masters in Cologne yesterday, seven days after Luke Donald won in Switzerland and two weeks after Miguel Angel Jimenez had his fourth victory of the year in Munich.

The famous gold trophy was to be taken onto their Virgin flight at Heathrow at lunchtime. But Harrington believes it will be a real achievement to come home with it next Monday.

“The United States are favourites. They are always favourites and I think rightly so. Europe will have to play above themselves,” he commented.

“They have more highly ranked than us and have more major winners. And you can’t really use past performances because the team changes so much every two years.

“I have been asked whether I would like to have a putt to win the match like Bernhard did at Kiawah Island in 1991 (Langer missed it). I think we will have done really well if we get into that position.”

Harrington is the only player Langer has who is in the world’s top 10, but his form was becoming a worry until last week.

Langer himself even admitted as much last night.

The German stated: “I played the first two rounds with Thomas Bjorn and said to him that the one person I was a bit concerned about was Harrington, but Thomas said: ‘Don’t worry – he will be fine.’

“Now he has gone and won. I am delighted for him on a personal level and the run of winners the last three weeks is fantastic. I could not ask for anything more.”

With victory achieved, the one outstanding issue was Harrington’s shoulder - and there was good news on that front too.

The Dubliner had treatment over the weekend, but commented after his three-shot success: “It was perfect. I just overdid it.”

He practised for four hours on Friday and hopefully will have learnt the lesson at last that the moment he feels anything he should stop.

Asked if he felt 100% confident that he will be able to play all five sessions against the Americans, Harrington replied: “I am hoping I will not be required to. In an ideal situation nobody should play more than four.”

Incredibly, the 33-year-old had laser eye surgery on his dominant left eye just nine days ago and just as important, it seems, was a two-hour telephone conversation with American sports psychologist Bob Rotella late on Wednesday night.

Harrington had put Rotella’s book Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect in his luggage, but having worked with him for some time now it was not totally out of the blue when the man himself rang his hotel room.

“There have been a few inquests and a lot of gnashing of teeth at home trying to figure out what has been going wrong and Bob told me not to be so hard on myself,” said Harrington.

“I did not think things would turn around so quickly, though. I was just looking for a sign of form – a top-10 finish maybe.”

Winning was a real bonus. It looked like it might be the 25th runners-up finish of his career when he started the final round with two bogeys and trailed Northern Ireland’s Graeme McDowell by six shots.

But McDowell twice found water and in the end shot 77 to Harrington’s 70 and finished in a tie for third.

Paul Casey, joint sixth, was next best of the eight Ryder Cup players who started the tournament. But he was joint second until running up a quadruple bogey eight on the 71st hole.

Thomas Levet was 12th, Darren Clarke 17th after a closing double bogey and Jimenez 38th. Colin Montgomerie, Paul McGinley and Ian Poulter had missed the cut on Friday.

Only 11 of the side were due on today’s flight because Donald is already in America.