Final birdie lays the bogey for Harrington

He waited until his very last stroke of the European Tour season to find his deliverance, but it was worth the wait. Padraig Harrington's 5,331st competitive shot of a long and often frustrating campaign - when he had traversed the globe on countless occasions but without the nourishment of a title - brought victory in the flagship Volvo Masters at Montecastillo yesterday.

On a dry, cold day, when play could almost have been accompanied by the strains of an Irish reel, Harrington finished a shot clear of Paul McGinley. The Waterford Crystal trophy that awaited his victory was created by a team of four master craftsmen who had fired up the crystal to temperatures of 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit in its making. And, despite the cold breeze, there were times yesterday when it seemed that Harrington and McGinley (and indeed Darren Clarke) were involved in a shoot-out of similar temperatures.

Harrington, who had been five shots behind McGinley at an early stage of the third and final round (the event was curtailed to 54 holes when gales caused Saturday's play to be abandoned), shot a finishing round 66 for 12-under-par 204.

It gave him a winner's cheque of €539,074 (£333,330 sterling), moved him above Clarke into second place in the Order of Merit, behind Retief Goosen, and earned him sufficient world ranking points to move to a career high 10th.

The win was the perfect cure for a season in which he had been afflicted with a case of "seconditis". On seven occasions this year Harrington had to settle for the runners-up position.

Yesterday, the wait, and the heartache, seemed worthwhile as he closed out with a 25-foot birdie putt on the 54th and final hole to clinch victory from the grasp of McGinley. Ironically, the protagonists will become team-mates for the World Cup in Japan, which starts on Thursday.

Earlier in the week, with the run of seconds playing on his mind, Harrington had inquired of his wife, Caroline, if it would be possible to finish second in the tournament, second in the Order of Merit and second in the statistical stroke averages and greens-in-regulation.

"No," she'd replied, "second place in the tournament won't get you above Darren in the Order of Merit."

Yesterday, with the win safely bagged and such negative thoughts banished, Harrington said: "At least when I heard that I then knew that I couldn't be second in everything. It was a relief."

There is no doubt that the plague of second-place finishes had started to eat into him.

"Unfortunately with all the second place finishes, something happened at different times. There are times when second place is actually very good. There were times when somebody would have played really well to beat me. But there were other times when I would be the one to make mistakes. Sometimes I pushed a little too hard, and sometimes it just wasn't there.

"I have never experienced this sort of high before, and I hope it will last all the longer because of the lows that I have had during the year," said Harrington.

There were times during the season that Harrington felt his concentration had gone absent without leave. He partly attributed this to his failure to eat properly during a round, and so it was yesterday that he diligently indulged in some food on every second tee-box.

There was also a poor start - two three-putts in the opening three holes - which, he believed, "helped to focus my mind. I knew I needed to play every shot to the maximum that I could."

Harrington's win was the fourth European Tour success of his career (adding to the Madrid Open and Brazilian Open last year and the Spanish Open in 1996, his rookie season on tour) and turned what had been a frustrating and unfulfilled season into an extremely successful one.

Even in defeat, McGinley - who included one victory, in the Wales Open, among 12 top-10 finishes this year - could find the time to see what the win meant to Harrington.

"The law of averages suggested that Padraig would have to win a tournament somewhere. I am delighted for him. He came in for criticism from some quarters for the number of second places he had this year.

"But Padraig proved today that he doesn't back off coming down the stretch," insisted McGinley.