Philip Reid watched as the Dubliner had to play second fiddle to the architect of his defeat, Greg Norman

Padraig Harrington didn't look like a man who had been bitten and chewed up. He hates losing, but he didn't look anything like a man who had just been defeated.

Instead, with that ever-present smile of his, he walked off the course at Doonbeg yesterday - a 2 and 1 loser to the Great White Shark - with the look of someone who had rekindled a long lost love with links golf.

He had just played second fiddle to Greg Norman, on a links designed by the Aussie with a little help from the man above, and there was no hurt, no pain.

"Boy, that was fun," said Harrington, with all the feeling of a child who had been taken on his first rollercoaster ride. "It reminded me of playing golf as a kid when you'd play the same shot 10 different ways. I really didn't think anyone would design a golf course like this in this day and age."

With honorary membership of the new club bestowed on him, Harrington had further reason to be in high spirits. On a day when the course was blessed by the local parish priest, with the incantation that there would be no sliced shots and plenty of birdies, eagles, albatrosses and golden ferrets, Norman - who was six-under for 17 holes - and Harrington served up a feast for the crowd who descended on the dunes from far and wide.

For Harrington, two days after his second place finish in the European Open, it was a chance to move on; and, with the British Open at Muirfield next week, a perfect opportunity to reacquaint himself with links terrain.

"It was an ideal forerunner to my preparations," he said. "I still think I was probably better at links golf five or six years ago than I am now. Aside from my tee-shots, I don't think I hit one shot with a full normal swing. After playing here today, I know how I need to practice for the Open.

"When I am on the range, I know that I have to practice to picking a line and committing myself to it."

In recent years, Harrington has reconstructed his swing to get a higher ball flight - but that is something you don't need playing links golf, and he has changed from a driver with nine-degree loft to one of seven degrees with Muirfield in mind so that he can get more run on the ball.

"I never had a problem hitting low shots with my irons, but this round, a competitive round, has shown me the need to commit to a shot at the times that you are aiming 40 yards right of the flag, as you have to do at times playing links golf."

Before heading over to Scotland, Harrington intends to get "three good days practice" on links terrain, but he was effusive in his praise for the course that Norman has created at Doonbeg.

"I don't think you will find a links course like it. It is unique. You are going to get good bounces and bad bounces; you're going to hit greens and find that you'll struggle to get down in two putts. It is true links, it gives you a mental test and a short game test. I thought I was going to come here and find a course with flat greens and flat fairways, and it certainly isn't that."

Indeed, the quirkiness of some holes, including the bunker in the middle of the 12th green, appealed to Harrington.

"It sums up the golf course," he insisted. "There is hardly a person in the world who would have the courage to do that but Greg Norman. It sums up his whole design philosophy. He is his own man. He saw that as an opportunity to design something different."

Not only that, but Norman, who has put his heart and soul into the course at Doonbeg, showed that it was very playable.

"He played beautifully, didn't he?" remarked Harrington of his opponent in a match that served as the official opening of the new links. And so he did.

After the pair opened with birdies on the first - "my favourite hole," said Harrington, "with that elevated tee and the view out to the sea" - Norman went ahead with a birdie on the third hole and never trailed again.

The Australian was two up after five, but Harrington reduced the deficit to one with a punched nine-iron to 12 inches on the short ninth. As they traded holes over the homeward run, Norman applied the killer blow on the 15th by rolling in a six-footer for his sixth birdie of the round. Within minutes of winning, the Shark had departed on a helicopter to catch a flight to Rome for a few days' break.

And, yet, unlike his second- place finish to Michael Campbell on Sunday, this defeat didn't leave any sour taste.

"You never look back," remarked Harrington.

Indeed, his eyes are focused ahead, and on the British Open. Which is why yesterday's round, and the return to true links golf, was so timely.