GOLF PGA CHAMPIONSHIP:MAYBE, NOW, he gets a sense of how the prodigal son felt. Yesterday, Pádraig Harrington – a self-imposed absentee from this flagship BMW PGA Championship for the past two years – returned to this leafy part of Surrey and did what he does best: he produced one sublime shot after another. And, when the 67 strokes were counted up, his scorecard constituted the best of the second round of this European Tour's showpiece, moving the 38-year-old Dubliner into a position of menace heading into the weekend.
Luke Donald, who plotted his way around this new-look course with all of the care of a solicitor in due diligence, claimed the midway lead with a second successive round of 68 to sit atop the field on 136, six-under-par. It gave him a one-stroke lead over the trio of Ross Fisher, a player brought up on this parkland terrain but doing a fine job of familiarising himself with all of the new nuances and challenges of the course’s redesign, overnight leader Danny Willett and James Kingston.
Behind them, though, lurked some dangerous pursuers; most notably Harrington, and defending champion Paul Casey. Italian teenager Matteo Manassero made a little piece of history by becoming the youngest player ever to make the cut in the PGA Championship: at 17 years and 32 days old, he beat the record of Seve Ballesteros by 160 days.
In its own strange way, the triple-bogey eight Harrington ran up at the penultimate hole of Thursday’s first round enabled him to stay focused yesterday. It gave him the proverbial kick up the backside, and the result was a focused and bogey-free round – including a couple of superb par saves – which enabled him to move up 39 places, into a tie for fifth.
Keeping a bogey off your card around Wentworth is an achievement. Harrington, for one, wasn’t for making a big deal of it. “I’m not feeling 100 per cent with my game, (but) I think the tougher conditions suit me . . . I’m not buzzing with confidence. There was no high and low in my game, everything was pretty solid. Nothing jumped out that I would have been running up to the range to practice.
“Everything did its part and I will stick with more of that for the next two days. It is a good thing I am a little bit on my toes. I think the golf course keeps you that way, you have got to pay attention – every hole has something that will catch you out if you hit a slack shot. There is plenty of intimidation. I will try and stay on edge, it worked quite nicely today,” added Harrington, seeking to end a winless drought that stretches back to his US PGA Championship in August 2008.
In composing the only bogey-free round, Harrington attributed his focus to the after-effects of that triple bogey on Thursday. It was fresh enough in the memory to keep him on his toes on a day when a gentle wind swirled through the trees, particularly noticeable on the final six holes.
Much of Harrington’s round was, as he put it, “pretty straightforward”. On the occasions, like the ninth where he found a fairway bunker off the tee, and the 15th, where he was in a greenside trap, that he found trouble, Harrington escaped with some superbly executed recovery shots.
Harrington’s shot of the day, nominated by the player himself, was a lob wedge approach from the first cut of rough to the 18th which set up a finishing birdie that moved him within two shots of the lead on what is a bunched leader-board. “I enjoy when I play like I have these two days. It’s better for me when I’m on edge,” he said.
Of the 11 Irish players who started out, eight made the cut: headed by Harrington (-4), with Damien McGrane (-2), Graeme McDowell (-1), Rory McIlroy (+1), Shane Lowry (+1), Gareth Maybin (+1), Paul McGinley (+2)and Peter Lawrie (+2), who finished with a triple bogey eight on the 18th.
Darren Clarke and David Higgins missed out on the weekend, while Michael Hoey withdrew before the second round due to illness. Ian Poulter, the Order of Merit leader, also failed to survive the cut.
Donald, without a win since his Honda Classic victory on the US Tour in 2006, assumed the midway lead with a typically methodical round. “You have to plot your way around,” he said.
Still, the lack of a win in over four years is something that needles him. Why hasn’t he won? “If I knew that, I might have won . . . the only thing I can put it down to is I challenge myself with a tough schedule, I like to play against the best players . . . Hopefully, it will click into place.”
