HOW PÁDRAIG Harrington must love all this Tiger and Phil hype. This week, in the Quail Hollow championship in North Carolina, the Dubliner – still seeking a first tour win of the season – returns to tournament play following his two-week sojourn since Augusta and, with all talk of the “Paddy Slam” confined to history, will hope to fly in under the radar.

Easier said than done, of course, but Tiger Woods’s decision to play at Quail Hollow – a tournament he won in 2007 but missed last year because he was recovering from his first knee surgery to repair cartilage damage – and the fact Phil Mickelson is also competing, with a chance (albeit an outside one) of overtaking his nemesis at the top of the official world golf rankings means the Tiger and Phil Show will again be the big draw.

Harrington has spent much of the past fortnight in White Oak – a golf resort in North Carolina which he represents – interspersing his family holiday with some work on his chipping, an area of his game which he felt let him down in the Masters. “I’m looking forward to getting back to action at Quail Hollow. I’m by no means despondent (after) the Masters, it’s a case of looking forward and there are a lot of big events coming up.”

Indeed, Harrington’s schedule sees him play in next week’s Players Championship at Sawgrass – with Thongchai Jaidee’s second European Tour victory of the season in the Ballantines championship on Sunday moving him into the world’s top 50 for the first time and earning him a place in the field for a tournament unofficially called the “fifth major” – followed by a return to this side of the Atlantic for 3 Irish Open at Baltray on May 14th-17th.

Harrington’s decision to bypass the BMW PGA championship at Wentworth the week after the Irish Open means he will return stateside in his build-up to the US Open at Bethpage in June, opting to miss out on the European Tour’s flagship event to prepare for the season’s second major by playing the Memorial and the St Jude Classic as his preparatory tournaments.

For Mickelson to overtake Woods as the world number one, he would have to win this week’s Quail Hollow tournament – which has 10 of the top-14 ranked players in the world competing – with Woods finishing well down the field. However, Woods has a good record at Quail Hollow, having won in 2007, finished third in 2004 and 11th in 2005.

While Harrington, seventh in the latest world rankings, continues to spend the vast majority of his playing time in the US, Darren Clarke will be hoping a return to Japan for the Crowns tournament – which he won in 2001 – will act as a springboard towards his quest to return to the world’s top 50. At present, Clarke is ranked 85th.

Clarke has chosen to play a happy hunting ground in Japan this week in an attempt to revitalise his game, rather than playing the Spanish Open in Girona where Peter Lawrie – with his first top-10 finish of the season in Korea on Sunday – goes about defending a European Tour title for the first time in his career.

Lawrie won his maiden tour title in the Canaries a year ago, but he will be defending on a different course as the PGA Golf de Catalunya is hosting the event for the first time since 2000.

Lawrie is joined in Spain by a strong Irish contingent that also includes Paul McGinley, Damien McGrane, Michael Hoey (returning to action for the first time since his win in the Portuguese Open), Gary Murphy and Jonathan Caldwell.

For tour rookie Caldwell, the return to Catalunya will have some positive memories as he secured his tour card over this same course in last year’s Qualifying School.

One man hoping for better fortune this week will be Spain’s Gonzalo Fernandez Castano, whose recent run of form has seen him rise to 53rd in the latest world rankings (but not sufficiently high to get into next week’s Players). Castano’s defeat to Jaidee in a play-off in the Ballantines was the Spaniard’s third runner-up finish in his past three tournaments.

There’s also a strong Irish contingent on the Challenge Tour this week, with the quintet of Michael McGeady, Richard Kilpatrick, Colm Moriarty, Noel Fox and Gareth Shaw all competing in the Moroccan Classic in El Jadida. At the moment, Shaw, in his first full season as a professional, is best of the Irish on the Challenge Tour money list (in 24th).

The top 20 on the order of merit at the end of the season will win their full tour cards for 2010.

Incidentally, despite his win in the Portuguese Open moving him up to a new status on the main tour, Hoey – a product of the Challenge Tour – hasn’t ruled out playing in June’s Challenge of Ireland at Moyvalley.

“If I’m not playing the Austrian Open, there’s a fair chance I might play the Challenge of Ireland myself. That’s the best thing about my win in Portugal – it allows me to pick and choose which events I play. The win also gave me great confidence, because there’s a big difference between thinking you can win golf tournaments, and knowing it. There was a time when I worried that I might never fulfil my potential, but now the future’s looking a lot rosier than it was.”