It's what links golf is all about. One bounce of a ball, one lucky break; that's all it takes to decide if destiny is your friend, or your foe.

Yesterday, in the 131st British Open Championship here, Padraig Harrington's fate was in his own hands but he agonisingly finished up one shot outside of a play-off. And, when all the dust had settled, and Ernie Els was eventually crowned champion, the Dubliner insisted his decision to hit a driver off the final tee, the 72nd hole of regulation play, where he incurred a bogey, remained the right decision.

Nobody can doubt Harrington's heart, and no one can cast doubt about what goes on in his head either. Course management is critical to win any tournament, but especially a major; and Harrington - with the pressure of playing catch-up at that time, but fully in tune with his driving all day - insisted his aggressive play off the last tee was the right one.

"I'd do the same again," said Harrington, who finished in tied-fifth, one stroke outside a four-way play-off that featured Els, Thomas Levet, Stuart Appleby and Steve Elkington.

"I'd made all the right choices throughout the day. Ernie (Els) was eight-under at the time and who would expect him to play the last four holes in one-over? I played them in one-under.

"I was trying to get into a play-off by getting a birdie and was prepared to take my chance in getting that birdie. I wanted destiny to be in my own hands."

The shot that effectively cost Harrington a place in the play-off was his drive, which found a vicious lie in a fairway bunker. The ball was so close to the face that he had no chance to play it back out onto the fairway.

"I would have had to be left-handed," he remarked. Instead, he was forced to play it out over the fence that runs all the way up the left side of the fairway, over the spectator pathway and into the rough. He got a drop for line of sight - the grandstand was between him and the flag - and then put his approach to 40 feet.

The par putt that would have got him into a five-way play-off shaved the hole. It was his only bogey of the day.

Many others had taken irons off that tee, including Harrington's playing partner, Stuart Appleby, who hit a two-iron and then a five-iron approach to 20 feet and holed the putt for only the fourth birdie of the day on the hole.

Harrington, who had been six-under, and two behind Els, when standing on that final tee, finished with a bogey for a final round 67 for five-under-par 279.

If there was an Achilles heel for Harrington throughout the championship, it was his putting. Normally one of the strengths of his game, he had an average of 31.5 putts over the four days - 33, 31, 32 and 30 - and finished down in 74th place in the putting statistics.

By contrast, Els, in winning his first British Open to add to his two US Open titles, topped the putting with a 27.75 average. It gave further substance to the adage of drive for show, putt for dough.

And Harrington, knowing this, spent two hours a day on the practice putting green attempting to sort it out, and even switched putters mid-tournament.

The Dubliner, though, has become a genuine major player this season. In the three major championships this season, he has finished tied-fifth (US Masters), tied-eighth (US Open) and tied-fifth (British Open), and there is a confidence about him that would suggest that the future holds brighter prospects than it ever has.

Asked if he was disappointed, he replied: "Why should I be disappointed? It is not my fault. You only get disappointed when you don't have the answers, and the answers are in my game. If I can put them together one week I will be okay.

"I am confident for the future because of the past. I hit the ball today well within myself, and I have just got to get it all together. I'm very, very confident about my future prospects.

"You need a full package to win a major and I just didn't have the putting this week. I've been improving for a few years in the majors but am more in the limelight this year and am happy with the way things are developing."

No sooner had Harrington finished his round than Els started to leak shots over the homeward holes. The South African bogeyed the 14th and then double bogeyed the 16th, before a birdie on the 17th got him back to six-under and into the play-off.

"When I walked off the 16th green," Els was to admit, "it was the lowest point of my entire week. I was under the most unbelievable pressure then. I've never felt anything like that, I had just gone mentally. It made 17 all of a sudden the most crucial hole of my tournament. I thought, 'is this the way to lose another major? Are you going to screw up an Open championship'. I'm kind of hard on myself, but, somehow, I pulled myself together."

In that four-hole, strokeplay play-off, Elkington and Appleby, the two Aussies, each bogeyed the 18th - the fourth hole of play - to exit, leaving Els and Levet, who had previously shown his ability in play-offs by winning a four-man battle in last year's British Masters, to duel it out.

Els won at the first hole of sudden-death, the fifth hole of the play-off, to earn his third major championship and surpass $14 million in career winnings.

"I guess I just grinded it out," remarked the South African. "I came here with not a lot of confidence and I'm leaving as the Open champion. I think I've shown that I can still play like a man who has a lot of talent.

"I truly do not know how I made that putt for the championship," he said. "Every time I looked like getting away I made some mistakes.

"I've been trying to win this for a long time and if I hadn't done it today I might never have done it. It would have been a hard loss to take. You can only take so much."

"Now I'm back on track. I can now legitimately try and win the four majors. It was difficult, but I'm proud of myself for coming through. And nobody ever said it was going to be easy."