Harrington relying on wild-card option

WHO WOULD have thought it? The shoo-in needs a favour. Whether Pádraig Harrington will be at Celtic Manor for the Ryder Cup in October is at the whim of Europe’s captain Colin Montgomerie.

An inglorious missed cut here in the US PGA at Whistling Straits – a consequence of a double-bogey six on the 18th as he finished his second round on Saturday – meant the Dubliner’s qualifying campaign was done and dusted as the dragonflies and the damselflies chased the mosquitoes around him. In one stroke which finished in Seven Mile Creek, it was out of his hands.

To be there at the coalface in Wales, Harrington, a Ryder Cup regular since making his debut at Brookline in 1999, will need one of Montgomerie’s three wild-card picks – which won’t be revealed until Sunday week, August 19th, after the automatic places are finalised with the conclusion of the Johnnie Walker championship.

And, rather than chase back across the Atlantic to play in this week’s Czech Open or next week’s qualifying-ending Johnnie Walker in Gleneagles, Harrington has decided to stick to his guns. That means a few days’ family holidays in North Carolina before an assault on the FedEX Cup series on the US Tour which starts with next week’s Barclays Championship in New Jersey.

Indeed, should Harrington go on to the reach the Tour Championship in Atlanta next month, his end-of-season schedule would be a packed one, taking in four tournaments in five weeks up to the Ryder Cup – the Barclays, the Deutsche Bank, the BMW and the Tour finale – to be followed immediately by the Alfred Dunhill Links in Scotland the week after Celtic Manor.

For a player who maps his entire season around the Majors, this year has been nothing short of a disaster for Harrington with three missed cuts – in the US Masters, the British Open and the US PGA – and a distant tied-22nd in the US Open. Harrington remarked: “You cannot just click your fingers . . . . I know I have a great chance of winning any Major when I tee it up, so coming into each one I am under pressure from the start.

“I don’t think I will change anything but I know I get it right some weeks and when I do I’ll win some more majors.” He added: “Such is life, I haven’t had the best of things (in majors). I haven’t had the best of runs,” conceded Harringtron, “but you just have to be patient.”

Harrington is not alone in awaiting Monty’s final word on who is in and who is out. Paul Casey. Justin Rose. Maybe even Luke Donald. Henrik Stenson. They’re all in the same boat.

As Harrington put it of his missed cut, “There are Ryder Cup implications. I hope Monty is a guy who looks through things and sees stats – 16 top 10s in the last year is going to be a lot of comfort. I am sure he needs some experience in that team and some older guys.

“At the end of the day, nobody who doesn’t qualify deserves automatically to be picked. It is the decision of the captain . . . if it doesn’t happen I will be disappointed but there is not more I could have done.”

Darren Clarke, who is one of Montgomerie’s three vice-captains, finished his PGA with a final round 73 for 289, one over, which featured 34 putts and a four-putt triple bogey on the ninth. He has opted not to play in this week’s Czech Open or next week’s Johnnie Walker and has accepted his role at Celtic Manor will be in an official capacity. Clarke expects Monty to be in contact with him before Gleneagles, but said of Harrington’s cause for a wild-card pick. “Pádraig’s a world-class player. He’s obviously just got on a bit of a tough run (in the majors), but he is playing really well.”

Interestingly, Clarke doesn’t believe Harrington, Casey or Rose will affect their chances of getting a wild card by staying away from Gleneagles and doesn’t see any similarities with the case of Ian Poulter two years ago who controversially stayed away from the final counting tournament but still got a pick from Nick Faldo.

Why the difference? “There’s three of them,” pointed out Clarke. It could be a case of safety in numbers for Harrington.