Pádraig Harrington hopes history can repeat itself at the Wyndham Championship this week.

The Dubliner currently sits 129th in the FedEx Cup standings, four places outside of the qualification places for the play-offs, which begin with The Barclays next week.

Harrington was in almost exactly the same position two years ago when he arrived in Greensboro in 130th place, and a tie for 47th was enough to lift him into 124th. He made the second play-off tournament too, and is optimistic he will continue his record of always having qualified for the play-offs.

The three-time Major winner said: “I think I need to have a good week. I’m thinking top 25 should be good enough. So that’s the goal. “Well, the goal is to go out there and win, and if I can’t win obviously finish in the top 25 and give myself a chance of playing in the first FedExCup event and trying to move on from there.”

Harrington, who missed the cut at the US PGA Championship last week, feels he is playing better than his results suggest. He said: “It’s just been an odd year. I haven’t really scored very well. I can’t put everything together in a given week. So you have to have patience and accept that this is going to happen every so often and try and be patient to wait for it to turn around. But, to be honest, I’m very happy with the state of my game at the moment and where it’s going, and if it doesn’t happen this week, I’m sure it will happen over the next number of weeks.”

Harrington is not the only big-name player battling to make it into next week’s field. Vijay Singh, David Toms, Trevor Immelman, Ben Curtis, Davis Love III and YE Yang are all currently outside the top 125.