Volvo Masters: With a contingent comprising almost one-10th of the field, you'd have expected some sort of return. Wouldn't you? It didn't happen that way for the six Irishmen in the 55-man field yesterday, however, with not one of them managing to better par. And it was the two nursing injuries, Graeme McDowell and Padraig Harrington, who managed to stay closest to the action with one-over-par 72s, five shots behind the leaders.

In some ways, the golfing gods conspired to mock.

Peter Lawrie, for instance, suffered a double-hit when playing a delicate chip from the greenside collar on the 16th, having initially hit for all the world what looked like a wonderful approach iron, and Paul McGinley's 74 contained a double-bogey and a triple-bogey, both of which came from nowhere.

That McDowell managed to play at all was a wonder. Not only have his preparations been limited by the recurrence of a spinal injury that first surfaced in late-July after a car accident, but he has also come down with flu-like symptoms. "I only feel about 50 per cent, to be honest. I've a sore throat and feel fluey, to go with the bad back," he remarked.

In the circumstances, his 72 was not a bad effort. "I got into a good rhythm and putted well too," said McDowell, who made the decision to play only after hitting some balls on the range yesterday morning. "My reasoning was that I'm 51st in the world rankings and, if I don't play in tournaments, then I can't improve. I decided to get some holes under my belt and try to get match fit again," he explained.

The top-50 in the world rankings at the end of the year are invited to the US Masters.

McDowell started out as if there wasn't a thing wrong, hitting a wedge approach to the first and holing an eight-footer for birdie. But he bogeyed the sixth - "a misclub" - then bogeyed the 10th, where he pushed his three-wood tee-shot and was left with a hanging lie for the approach and missed the green. "I think the painkillers had started to wear off a bit," he added. Still, he birdied the long 11th and strung together six pars before suffering a bogey on the last, where he pushed his drive into the cork trees.

Within half-an-hour, McDowell was joined on 72 by Harrington, who rolled in a 25-footer for birdie on the 18th to further salvage a round that had threatened to get away from him on the front nine.

Harrington suffered four bogeys in five holes from the fifth, turning three-over, but birdies on the 10th, 11th and 18th (with just one bogey on the 13th) meant he hadn't played himself out of the tournament.

"I struggled with my neck," admitted Harrington, who injured it by overworking on the range on Tuesday when he spent some seven hours hitting shots. "I couldn't really swing my driver properly, especially when I was trying to hit it harder. On the ninth, it pinched on the top of my backswing and I quit on it," he added.

Two bad holes were effectively responsible for McGinley's woes. "I thought my game was quite decent, and 74 was a poor result," he said. The damage was done on the third, where he three-putted from six feet for a double bogey, and on the seventh, where he drove into a bunker behind a tree, played out to the safety of the fairway, but then hit a seven-iron over the back of the green. After chipping to 20 feet, he proceeded to three-putt again.

"There was a lot of good golf in my round, I just didn't get away with the bad shots. My short game is where I'm struggling, I'm just not comfortable with the grasses around the greens and I have to get to the bottom of it. My course management was okay, (but) I need to have a better variety of short game."