Days like yesterday are the intense tutorials which young golfers need. In a season when Padraig Harrington's improvement curve has been so sure and steady a competent round which saw him sneak onto the leader board and then scamper off it will have to be put down to experience.

The US Open at Pebble Beach is one of the great competitions.

This year it unfolds within one of the most beautiful cathedrals of the game. Harrington cleared his throat early on yesterday for what was intended as a sweet opening aria. Instead his voice got lost in the breezy vastness.

Three birdies and one bogey on the first seven holes was as good it got. He left with a two over par score of 73 which left him in a respectable, upwardly mobile sort of neighbourhood.

He has lessons to absorb but golf has no more apt pupil.

Harrington is a singular fellow in every sense, good humoured but allergic to the chirpy bonhomie which informs the clubhouse scene. As all the old gangs of friends tumbled off laughing and joking down the fairways on the practice days here, Harrington and his caddie Dave McNeilly walked alone, plotting, planning and measuring.

Harrington is still recovering from the Benson and Hedges disaster, not from the loss of money but from the loss of rankings and the loss of self knowledge.

To have come to Pebble Beach knowing just how he would have dealt with leading a big tournament by five shots going into the final day would have been equivalent to an extra few years experience.

As it happened his round yesterday was learning all the way.

The greens at Pebble Beach are so small that if you didn't know better you'd think they couldn't afford a roller. As the day matured the wind along the Pacific stiffened a little bit and the greens began to look even meaner.

Harrington was chipper, though, he birdied the relatively straightforward first, demonstrating unfussily that all parts were moving smoothly.

All was fine until he hit traffic. The par-three fifth hole became a bottleneck early on yesterday, with a nasty pin placement urging caution and the ocean beckoning stray balls. Harrington's group was held up for 20 minutes or so on the fourth green and despite observing the club selections and shots of the group in front his rhythm had been chopped by the time he stood on the teebox.

He wasn't alone in his suffering. Brad Faxon jemmied his ball onto the cliffside over the water and teetering there turned his round into a disaster. Harrington hit a clunker into the bank on the far side of the bunker to the left of the green. Harrington's second shot off that steep bank was a thing of beauty and courage - one misjudgment and his ball was gone for fishbait.

He left himself just off the green and two putted for a bogey which he couldn't complain about.

He straightened his back and set to work again, working an efficient birdie on the long par-five sixth hole and following up with another birdie on seven, rolling in the key putt from 11 feet with easy confidence.

Harrington looked just then like a man who'd got his groove back. He played the eighth, a hole with a gaping abyss in the middle, with brisk efficiency, just a recalcitrant blade of grass away from birdieing with a sweet downhill pull from 15 feet.

Then to nine, looking to take the turn with red numbers after his name.

The hole was an unmitigated disaster for Harrington, a decent drive being followed by a second to the rough just off the back of the green, a then a chip which came up short.

He was still in with a decent chance of par but three putted, a turn of events which was as unexpected as it was costly. He had been putting superbly through the first eight holes.

The journey home was unleavened by many bright spots. The par four 11th and par five 14th both claimed shots, compounding the damage done on the ninth. His move from red numbers to black on the leaderboard had been swift. Two under teeing off on the ninth, two over arriving on the 15th. All the time the path ahead was marked by what has become the defining sight of every major tournament, the golden hordes following in the wake of Tiger Woods.

The sound of thunderous cheering told Harrington that the god of modern golf was having a hot day, the scoreboards confirmed the distance Harrington still has to cover.

Three days left. He's game.