DAY BY day, it would appear, Pádraig Harrington has been thrown into a series of unfortunate events. Yesterday, on the eve of opening his defence of the Claret Jug, his mischievous right wrist proved so troublesome he was confined to walking, watching and occasionally chipping and putting around the greens as he put his prospects of playing in the championship at "no more than 75 per cent".

Odds are he will, in fact, play. But the health - or otherwise - of his wrist, damaged in a routine training exercise last Saturday night and receiving intensive treatment since from his sports chiropractor Dale Richardson, remains unproven.

What happens the first time he is required to hit out of Birkdale's thick, clinging rough? Can he fully commit to such a shot?

Certainly, Harrington's problems were plain to see yesterday. On the first occasion he attempted to play a practice round, it was aborted after he had hit just three shots (two from the tee, one an approach from the middle of the fairway) and suffered a jarring pain in the wrist.

Then, after he had received treatment and had the wrist strapped, his second attempt to play - again he teed off at the 10th, as he had not played the back nine on Tuesday - was immediately knocked on the head when he again felt pain.

There and then he took the decision simply to walk the course, watch the others in the group play their shots and confine his final practice to chipping and putting.

Of his prospects of even teeing it up in defence of his title, Harrington remarked: "Yesterday I was fully sure that I would be able to play. I was just worried that I would inflame it when hitting a shot out of the rough or a bunker or something. Today, I am not so fully sure I'll play.

"I have maybe a 75-per-cent chance of playing. I'm still worried about inflaming it at some stage during the course of four days and having to stop.

"I'd say there's a 75-per-cent chance I'll tee it up, and it's probably 50-50 that I can keep going for four days on top of that . . . I'm just going to give it every chance to play and if there is pain I am still going to play anyway. I'll just try to get on with it.

"It's more the intimidation of hitting the ball when there is pain, not actually the amount of pain, that's the problem. I'd ignore the pain. It's just the doubt of going through the impact. It's whether the pain is affecting my ability to commit to hitting the golf ball."

He has so fair refrained from using painkillers and has ruled out injections. "I'm not in favour of cortisone injections, I'd prefer to find some other way around it," he said.

He is, however, expected to take painkillers before the first round, and the decision on whether to play will be taken after he goes through his warm-up routine on the range. He is scheduled to play alongside Retief Goosen and Justin Leonard today. Heath Slocum is the first reserve should Harrington be unable to play.

Although the preparations have been far from ideal, Harrington sought a philosophical line.

"I'm not in control of the wrist injury; it's not something I can worry about. I've done it. If I . . . said I was playing badly or putting badly or something like that, I would be worried because I would be trying to fix it. But somebody else is trying to fix my wrist, so that's why I am not getting too stressed."

The man charged with getting him right is Richardson, an Australian chiropractor who numbers Harrington among several charges - including Graeme McDowell - on tour.

While Harrington's wrist has soft-tissue damage, Richardson is also treating the stabiliser muscle just below the elbow, which is also inflamed.

"We hadn't been focusing on that as part of the problem, so maybe a little bit of work on that will help," said Harrington. "We've also changed anti-inflammatories, so everything is as can be."

Harrington's eve-of-championship preparations had started with a warm-up on the range that gave no indication of the trouble ahead, and by day's end he was watching the shots of others - like Doug McGuigan, Hennie Otto, Jeff Overton and Darren Fichardt - to glean important information.

"I tried to watch other people hitting the shots so I could judge what way the ball was flying," he explained. "I haven't played the back nine at all and I know the 12th and 14th tee boxes are sheltered and it is very hard to trust how hard the wind is blowing there. When you play a practice round you can sort that out . . . . but I've done this before, in terms of had a poor preparation.

"The preparation I've had is as good as I could do. I won't have any hang-ups over it. I hope to go and play and when I do I hope to see all the shots."