Harrington targets hat-trick

TOUR SCENE NEWS ROUND-UP:PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON returns to competitive fare this week for the first time since the Ryder Cup at Valhalla when he tees it up in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, a tournament he was won twice in the last six years.

The world number four conceded he was physically and emotionally drained by the Sunday in Kentucky, a legacy of his major-winning exploits earlier in the summer. He didn't play in the British Masters at the Belfry last weekend and has opted for a curtailed schedule as the European Tour reaches a conclusion for this season.

There are five counting events left before the 2008 European Tour Order of Merit winner will be decided at the Volvo Masters in Valderrama, with Harrington confirmed for this week's Dunhill event before returning for the finale in Spain.

He was considering the Portugal Masters but instead has accepted an invitation to play in the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in Bermuda. This elite tournament is ostensibly confined to the major winners of a given year, but the practical implications are slightly different.

Given Tiger Woods' knee injury and Harrington's victories in the British Open and US PGA Championship, two alternates - they have to have won a major - were required to flesh out the most exclusive fourball in golf. Phil Mickelson and two-time US Open-winner Retief Goosen topped this year's Major champions' point list and earned the right to join Harrington and US Masters champion Trevor Immelman at the Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda from October 14th-15th.

But Mickelson declined, so he is replaced by fellow US Ryder Cup hero Jim Furyk, who will play in the event for the third straight year, notwithstanding his last victory in a major was the 2003 US Open.

It is not the first time alternates were required: in 2006 Mickelson again absented himself from the tournament in a year in which Woods won a brace of majors.

A €900,000 prize fund for the Bermuda event will see the winner taking home a cheque for €400,000, second place €200,000, third €170,000 while the player who finishes last in the fourball will bank €130,000.

Harrington's priority this week will be to try to secure a third victory in the Dunhill to go with those he enjoyed in 2002 and 2006. He leads Lee Westwood - the Englishman lost in a play-off at the Belfry on Sunday - in the Order of Merit race by €228,317.

The tournament takes place over three courses - St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns - and the professionals play with amateur partners, which could lead, as Westwood wryly noted at the weekend, to six-hour rounds.

It will certainly represent another test of Harrington's mental and physical stamina.

He is joined in the field by nine of his European Ryder Cup team-mates, with only Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter missing out.

There is a significant Irish representation led by Harrington and including Graeme McDowell, who acquitted himself brilliantly at Valhalla, winning two-and-a-half points from a possible four.

The Portrush golfer has an affinity for this tournament, having equalled the low round in 2004 - 62 at St Andrews - a year that saw him beaten in a play-off by Scotland's Stephen Gallacher. Paul McGinley, Darren Clarke, Damien McGrane, Peter Lawrie and Gary Murphy complete the Irish contingent.

England's Nick Dougherty will try to achieve what no Dunhill winner has managed, namely to defend the title.

Irish hopes will be no less fervent on the European Challenge Tour which this week stops in Toulouse for the AGF Allianz Open. It is only one of two remaining tournaments before the top 45 players on the Order of Merit qualify for the lucrative, end-of-season Apulia San Domenico Grand Final in Puglia, Italy.

Michael Hoey took a one-shot lead into the final round of the Dutch Futures event at the weekend, but a 72 saw him slip to a tie for sixth place. He is 29th on the Order of Merit, with the top 20 getting full European Tour playing privileges next season. Hoey is a little over €14,000 behind Switzerland's Raphael de Sousa, who occupies 20th place on the list.

Hoey will play all three tournaments.

Michael McGeady (38th) and Colm Moriarty (54th) also tee it up in France this week. As things stand, McGeady would squeeze into the season-ending Grand Final but Moriarty, who missed the cut in Holland, would probably require a couple of top-10 finishes to qualify.

Gareth Maybin, third in the standings with earnings of €113,614, has not played since winning the Quingdao Open in China. He missed both the Kazakhstan and Dutch Futures tournaments in favour of resting after a long run of events and on the basis that he is guaranteed a full European Tour card next season.

He has elected to take a third weekend off by not entering the Toulouse Open, but will return for the Italian Federation Cup next weekend ahead of the Grand Final, also in Italy, seven days later.

There is a place in the HSBC event in Shanghai - it marks the start of next season's European Tour schedule - for the player who finishes top of the Challenge Tour Order of Merit. Maybin trails Gary Lockerbie by €16,000.