Harrington off the pace in Turkey

“Slow down,” implored Pádraig Harrington as his belly wedge from greenside rough at the back of the sixth green took off like a scalded cat. The ball didn’t listen, not even to a three-time Major champion, and it scuttled past the flagstick and beyond before rolling down the hill and into the pond.

And that’s how the Dubliner’s triple-bogey six on the Par 3 sixth hole of the opening round of the Turkish Airlines Open here on the Regnum Carya course spoiled his card, as Harrington – a winner of the Portugal Masters a fortnight ago – produced an opening round 72, one-over-par, to be all of eight strokes adrift of leader George Coetzee, of South Africa.

On a day of lovely sunshine and ideal scoring conditions, no fewer than 46 players in the limited 78-man field managed to record sub-par rounds, among them US Masters champion Danny Willett, requiring a top-five finish to leapfrog the absent Henrik Stenson in the Race to Dubai standings, who signed for a 69. "I don't think it's far off," remarked Willett, sensing continued improvement in his game after a disappointing recent spell.

For Harrington, though, it was a case of battling for everything. That recent win in Portugal had seen him compile a total aggregate of 23-under-par, which constituted the lowest 72-holes total on the European Tour this year and was also the lowest career score of Harrington’s career. Here, it was a case of surviving on scraps as he produced a mixed card of four birdies, two bogeys and that ugly triple bogey.

The triple came out of the blue. In actual fact, his tee shot covered the flag only to kick on and run into the rough 12 feet behind the pin. In the pro-am on Wednesday, he’d had an identical shot and stiffed it. Not this time. “I was trying not to be defensive and I succeeded . . . I knew the water was there. I knew I could hit it in the water. My own stubbornness I was saying, ‘don’t be a coward and leave it six feet short’,” said Harrington, who then took a penalty drop and played another belly wedge which was too defensive and came up six feet short. He missed the putt.

To his credit, as he does, Harrington kept battling away even if his A-Game had decided to absent itself. On the 18th, his approach came up short in a greenside bunker and was stuck under the lip. He conjured up a fine recovery to six feet but again missed the putt. “Pretty much apart from the hole I took a six on, I got the most out of everything all day . . . It would have been a great level par (round). But it wasn’t, so it was just a good one over.”

With no cut in the limited-field tournament which is the first of the European Tour’s “Final Series” that also takes in next week’s Nedbank championship and finally the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, Harrington will stick to a familiar process. “I will just keep doing the same thing and see what happens . . . I think guys have shot low numbers, it is that type of course. You can get several breaks where your ball can come close, if you miss those slopes all of a sudden you have to putt over them or chip over them or whatever and it is very awkward. I knew going out, I felt there would be a reasonable range of scoring, as in somebody would shoot low.”

The aim is that he will do it at some stage.

For Coetzee, ranked 85th in the Race to Dubai order of merit and only in the field due to so many absentees, it was a much-improved performance on what had gone before this season. With a solitary top-10 finish on tour so far this year, in the Qatar Masters back in January, the Springbok produced eight birdies in a round of 64 that gave him a one shot lead over Denmark’s Thorbjorn Olesen with four players grouped in tied-third a shot further back.

In providing some reason to his fine effort, Coetzee explained: “It’s just all the stuff that I’ve been working on this year. It’s been a long, hard process. Not been playing really well. Just had to be patient and luckily now is a good time as any for it to start clicking.”

Willett, too, was of the opinion that the work he has done in bringing a fade back into his game was started to bed in. “It was better. It was a lot more positive .... it’s just gaining the confidence and hitting shots, you’re doing it under pressure and making sure you’re trying to make some good moves. I don’t think it’s far off,” said the man with the most to gain this week from the absence of Stenson and Rory McIlroy from the field.