Golf: Generally speaking, golfers don't like to be taken by surprise. They like things to be regimented, to know exactly how far they can hit an iron, to know that their caddie is in the right place at the right time, and to know there are 14 clubs in the bag. No, no surprises, thank you very much! Except this time, it's different.
Padraig Harrington has been pleasantly surprised at how things have gone on the first two days of the Players' Championship. On Wednesday he played a practice round with former British Open champion Paul Lawrie and his ball striking was so bad he left the course wondering how on earth he would get the ball around once the tournament started. To say expectations were low would be an understatement.
Yesterday, the 32-year-old Dubliner fired a second-round 70 to add to his opening-round 68 to sit contentedly on six-under-par 138 at the midway stage. The key has been his accuracy off the tee, 22 of 28 fairways found. "Every time I hit it down the middle (on Thursday) I was baffled," said Harrington, "because I just hit it so poorly on Wednesday.
"But, you know, sometimes I have the habit of playing my best golf when my expectations are very low. Obviously, I should keep those low expectations for the weekend."
Indeed, his confidence had returned to such an extent yesterday that he used a driver off the tee and proceeded to drive the ball through the fairway into the rough. "If I wasn't so confident, I'd have hit three-wood. I hit the wrong club," he admitted. "I seem to play better with fear than I do with confidence."
Yet, it was a wake-up call of sorts, and for much of his second round, the good shots far outweighed the poor ones.
As his caddie, Dave McNeilly, observed of Harrington's approach in to the 14th, which set up the third of five birdies in the round, "it was an absolutely brilliant shot, it showed he's gone from being good to top drawer".
The shot in question was a high-floated nine-iron from 142 yards which settled 10 feet above the hole. And there were many other good shots, none better than the approach to the 16th as Harrington sought to finish strongly. There, faced with 232 yards to the pin off a slight up-slope, he hit a three-iron approach to about eight feet, only for the eagle putt to lip out.
"When you're putting badly, you can't see any lines and you start changing your mind and I brought Dave (McNeilly) in on the 15th, 16th and 18th. Normally, I wouldn't ask him to read three greens in a year."
Harrington missed his par putt on 15, his eagle putt on 16 and a birdie putt on 17 but finished off with a 15-footer for birdie.
"I'd have been feeling very sorry for myself if that hadn't gone in," he admitted.
His low expectations were based on history that he needs time to get sharpened to tournament play. This is Harrington's fourth outing of the year, while the likes of Vijay Singh is playing in his ninth event.
"It takes me a while to build, to get into a season," said Harrington, "and that's just the nature of my game. So, if it didn't happen this week, hopefully it would be there next week or the week after."
As things have transpired, Harrington's game has returned sufficiently to put him into contention here.
"All my focus is on this, to take it one shot at a time rather than looking ahead to two weeks' time (the Masters).
I'm in with a chance and if I play well I have got a chance . . . but nobody is going to get away with not performing over the weekend and hope to win.
"Whoever is going to win is going to have to play golf."
