Harrington ready to move on - maybe

USPGA Championship: What a difference a year can make. Twelve months ago, Padraig Harrington trooped from the recorder's hut at Hazeltine National just a shot outside securing his fourth top-10 finish in a major of the year.

Yesterday, energy bar in hand, the slim-line Dubliner came out of the recorder's room and down the steps of the elegant, mock-Tudor clubhouse knowing he wouldn't even make the top-30 of the US PGA at Oak Hill Country Club.

Despite the slight doubt that had hung over his participation in this year's final major, Harrington - who finished with 10-footer for par on the 72nd green, his eighth successive par of the back nine, in a birdieless finishing round of 73 for 10-over-par 290 - last night made the move on to Akron, Ohio, with the intention of playing in this week's WGC-NEC Invitational at Firestone Country Club.

However, his participation will depend on whether his wife, Caroline, gives birth to the couple's first child, which is due any day now.

Of his golf game, though, Harrington was philosophical about a performance that promised more than it delivered.

"I didn't play very well all week," he admitted. "I just didn't putt well enough, I was very average, and that's basically it. Like, today, I couldn't hole a birdie putt, and that dictated the score.

"I liked the course, (because it's) all in front of you, which is the way I like it. But you have got to make some birdies to counteract the bogeys and I didn't make enough of them."

That was the difference between making a late charge for a top-10 place and remaining stagnant.

Going into the championship, Harrington - who hadn't played since missing the cut at the Nissan Irish Open - had hoped that the work he had done in the interim would have brought about the necessary sharpness required for a title challenge.

"Every time you tee it up, to hope to win it, there's no question about that," he said. "But I tend to play a bit like this in the summer. For some reason, I'm inclined to drop off a little and that's the way I am at the moment. That is what I am putting it down to anyway. Next week is another week, if I'm playing, we'll see how it goes."

Harrington's play in Saturday's third round, when he shot 69, had provided a hint that the sharpness absent from the first two days had returned, despite feeling out-of-sorts with a new grip that was put on his driver just half an hour before his tee-time.

"It was horrible, it just upset me, and I took some time to settle down," he claimed.

He wasn't so upset, though, that it stopped him producing his best round of the championship. A run of three birdies in four holes from the ninth provided the impetus, and he came home in 34 - his run only marred by a bogey on the 17th - to move into tied-30th at the start of yesterday's final round.

Golf can be fickle, though, and Harrington probably got an idea that it wouldn't be his day from an early stage yesterday. On the second hole, his playing companion, Luke Donald, holed out with his four-iron approach from 167 yards for an eagle two, while Harrington scrambled for par after his approach ran through the green and into thick rough at the back.

But it was on the fourth hole, a par five of 570 yards, that Harrington probably discovered that it wouldn't be his day. Taking a driver off the tee in an attempt to clear the dogleg right, he pushed it high and right into the trees. When he completed the 300-yard walk to his ball, he discovered it lying only inches from a out-of-bounce fence, from which he was not entitled to relief.

After taking a penalty drop, he was still left with tree branches impeding his backswing and proceeded to send his four-iron recovery through the fairway onto a walkway, from where the green was blocked out by yet more trees.

Harrington's fourth shot then ran through the green, finishing in rough, and his chip shot finished 35 feet from the hole, failing to get over the vicious ridge that runs across the green. He was in serious three-putt territory.

Almost miraculously, though, he managed to hole the bogey putt for a six that was as good as sixes get.

Yet, that adventure was pretty much the defining moment of his fourth round; to make a run, he needed to come out with all guns blazing and, instead, he was put on the back foot.

When he missed a birdie putt from three feet on the sixth, it pretty much summed up what sort of day confronted the Irishman . . . and the rest of the round proved to be a grind.

In professional golf, though, there is always the consolation that there is another week, another tournament . . . and, depending on Caroline's pregnancy news, that could well be this week's NEC.