TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP:Pádraig Harrington's search for what he termed "salvation" in the Tour Championship became a tad more difficult yesterday when a familiar adversary in the form of Tiger Woods took a grip on the US Tour's finale to the FedEx Cup play-offs at East Lake Country Club in Atlanta, where the world's number one shot a second round for 68 for 135 to claim the midway lead.

As Woods, a six-time winner on the US Tour already this season, had a frustrating finish which finished with a bogey on the last, Harrington kept his focus and shot a 69 for 136, four under, that left him in a share of second place with Sean O’Hair at the halfway stage.

Ahead of again going eyeball to eyeball with Woods in another big tournament, Harrington had observed of the transformation to his season: “The FedExCup is possibly going to give me that salvation . . . if I win this week, I’ll have a great 2009. So, that’s what it’s all about. We concentrate on the four majors up until August. When that date comes, the PGA is finished, the big focus is the FedEx Cup and hopefully it will go all the way down to the wire on Sunday afternoon.”

Harrington is one of the few players on tour who isn’t afraid to stare Woods in the eye. He is not one to back off, and yesterday the 38-year-old Dubliner, who had a close-up view of Woods recording a hat-trick of birdies from the seventh, showed his own resilience by holing a nine-footer for birdie on the fourth and, then rebounded from a bogey on the seventh by grabbing a birdie from nine feet on the eighth.

Woods, though, stalked the fairways with menace and that birdie on the ninth to complete his hat-trick moved him into the lead where he was to be briefly joined by Stewart Cink, until the British Open champion ran up a horrible quadruple bogey eight on the 10th when hitting two tee-shots out-of-bounds and, thereafter, it became a head-to-head between Harrington and Woods.

Although Harrington bogeyed the 14th where he pushed his tee-shot into trees and Woods established a two-stroke lead with a birdie on the 15th, the two were drawn into an intriguing battle.

On the 15th, Woods had hit a wonderful approach in to five feet but missed the eagle putt and then missed from three feet on the 16th as he failed to put further distance between himself and his closest pursuer . . . and, then, on the 17th, Harrington had a great birdie opportunity to close the gap, only to miss from five feet.

The par three 18th again showed its teeth, with Woods bearing the brunt of it where he missed the green with his tee shot and then failed to find the putting surface with his recovery en route to a bogey four that brought him back to the field and left him just one shot clear of Harrington and O’Hair, who had a chance to tie Woods but missed from 15 feet at the last.

Harrington’s current form which has seen him finish inside the top-10 on each of his five appearances on the US Tour dating back to the Bridgestone Invitational, where he was runner-up to Woods, has galvanized his season.

But the three-time major champion still believes his travails earlier in the year, where he missed five cuts in succession, were, as he put it, “very productive for me,” adding of his decision to undergo swing changes: “I don’t have a regret about the work that I did in that part of the year. I probably got to the bottom of something that has been bugging me for a few years, but I also learnt a few other truths during that period, too. Yeah, it was a bit of a sacrifice, but it was well worth it. I certainly won’t be walking away from 2009 whatever happens not feeling like that was a year that I improved. I hope it’s the year that I made the biggest strides, to be honest.”

The weekend will go a long way to defining whether or not that is the case.