TENNIS/Smurfit European Open: Noted for his commitment to the minutiae of practice and preparation, it is hardly surprising to learn that Padraig Harrington is a devotee of statistical analysis. Yesterday as he strode into the media centre at the K Club to fulfil interview obligations ahead of the Smurfit European Open which begins tomorrow, he paused briefly to pore over a stats sheet.
As he sat on the podium he allowed himself a wry smile, subsequently explaining his amusement. "It's about driving distance. I've been languishing around the 100 mark; I see I'm 82nd here. I was 10th at the (US) Masters and fifth at the (US) Open in driving distance and I was saying to myself 'I seem to be hitting it fine. Everyone must be getting long.' I didn't play in Australia where the ball was running so the guys obviously got some good distances up.
"In South Africa it's at altitude so they got good distances up but at this stage I should be eating into that and catching up. So I started quizzing my caddie (Dave McNeilly) on what he was doing.
"The tee box goes up five or eight or 10 yards and he was managing to take that off my driving distance when he was calculating how far I was hitting it, which would be correct except for the fact that no one else is doing it. I found it very funny because normally the caddies are adding on the few yards and he was taking them off."
Not that Harrington places a huge emphasis on the statistics provided on the tour, instead preferring to rely on his own records. "I actually do my own stats after every tournament, write down the real tournament stats, as regards putting, chipping, pitching, greens, fairways that sort of stuff.
"Sometimes you hit a lot of fringes during the week and you'd think you'd played well but the stats would say that you didn't. I sit down after the four rounds to record different things."
The information is stored in a diary and cross checked against previous years. Is there a recurring theme? "It always tells me the same thing, that I need to improve my short game . . . pitching. Scoring clubs make the difference between you finishing 10 under par and sixth place (Murphy's Irish Open) and 14 under.
"It'd be very easy to go back and say I hit one in the water once or twice and that cost me the four shots but you'd probably find I didn't get it up and down off the fairway with my sand wedge. I figured out last week that I only got up and down once from 10 goes with either my sand or lob wedges.
"That's nine shots possibly left out on the golf course. It is easier to make up the four shots there than anywhere else."
Harrington conceded he had been a very good chipper as an amateur - he'd plenty of practice when missing greens on links courses - before adding that this aspect of his game was more important to him now.
"Now every time I don't chip and putt it can be costly. I get less opportunity to chip and putt yet those opportunities are all the more important because I am closer to the top of the leaderboard."
