USPGA TOUR NEWS:PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON has resolved to stop fiddling with his game and concentrate on playing his best at the Deutsche Bank Championship which starts in Boston tomorrow.
“I’m a little bit like that,” he said during his preparations in Norton, Massachusetts, yesterday. “I go in fads where I’m interested in playing and maybe other times where I’m interested in changing things and trying to improve things.
“So I have to be a little bit disciplined at the moment not to get drawn back into what I would have been doing for the first eight months of the year and wholeheartedly changing something.”
Harrington’s mid-season woes came on the back of one of the most successful periods of his career, winning both his second British Open title and the USPGA last year.
And the 38-year-old believes his increased profile has thrown undue focus on the changes in his game. He said: “I’ve had plenty of times in my career where I’ve made changes, significant changes, far more significant than the ones that I made this year.
“I think what happened this year is as I was making the change, I obviously was higher profile, so it stood out a bit more.
“And secondly, during the change, my short game was poor. Normally I’ve done these changes in the past and my short game has hidden them. This year it didn’t hide them, and I was a bit more in the spotlight.”
Harrington claimed a share of second place alongside a group of players including Tiger Woods at last week’s Barclays Championship in New Jersey. That was enough to take him back into the world’s top 10 and he hopes to use the support of the Massachusetts crowd to continue that form.
He said: “Obviously being Irish, coming to Boston is not a bad thing. I had a great week in New York last week, and obviously I probably expect even more support up here. So it is fantastic for me.
“Hopefully this week I’ll deliver a bit better than I did the last couple years.”
In fact, Harrington missed the cut in 2007 and 2009, but expects to manage better this time around. He said: “The golf course itself is a good, solid golf course. Going through it in my head as I was travelling up here, everything about it I like, so there’s no reason why I wouldn’t play well on the course.
“I’m keen for results at the moment obviously, and this would be a good week to have a win.”
TPC Boston
Course:Norton, Massachusetts
Length:7,207 yards. Par: 71.
Prizemoney:€4.9 million, €882,804 for the winner
Field:100.
Defending champion:Vijay Singh
Course Record:61 – Mike Weir and Vijay Singh.
Most difficult hole:The par four 14th has been dramatically changed with a difficult approach shot of upwards of 200 yards into a relatively small green.
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