Pádraig Harrington is not giving up the ghost just yet but the Dubliner knows he needs an exceptional round today, writes PHILIP REID,Golf Correspondent, at Royal Lytham and St Annes

NINE MINUTES after Rory McIlroy rolled in a par putt on the 18th green, Pádraig Harrington rolled in one of his own for a bogey. The upshot was the two Irish Major winners finished the first half of the 141st British Open locked on the same score – 142, two-over par – and their respective looks after emerging from the scorer’s hut indicated players sharing similar emotions too: Disappointment! Frustration!

“At two over,” said Harrington, all the time shaking his head, “you’re hoping for miracles on the weekend (to catch Brandt Snedeker).”

Miracles aren’t dispensed too readily on the golf course, and especially not here on this uniquely enclosed links, surrounded by housing and railway lines.

So, what kind of miracle?

Harrington, recalling the annexing of the last of his three Majors in the USPGA at Oakland Hills of 2008, said: “You know, I shot two 66s on the weekend before and certainly something like that (would be needed). If he’s out there on his own, the likelihood is he’ll come back to the field . . .  it’s hard to be isolated on your own at the top of the leaderboard. The best thing for me would be that he has a big lead.”

He added: “I think you can chase it, yeah.  But as I said, you need to get the breaks.  I’m depending on getting breaks.  If I was three-under par or so, I’d be depending on just playing good golf, whereas now I’m depending on playing good golf and getting a little bit lucky.”

Harrington had enough self-inflicted damage of his own in the second round. “I’m really disappointed,” admitted the Dubliner who shipped four bogeys in his last seven holes. “I was coasting along. Bar 18, my bogeys came off holes I played well. The shots, you know, on 11, 15, 16, weren’t that bad shots. I’ll have a long day ahead of me thinking about those. They all came off great shots. so I really don’t feel so good,” admitted Harrington.

The front nine, with the opening holes played in a slight crosswind, was almost flawless. Harrington birdied the first – from six feet – and the eighth, from eight feet. He was two under at that point, only to tumble back with four bogeys coming in. The first came at the par-five 11th where he was in a greenside bunker and played an aggressive recovery. The others came on the 15th, 16th and 18th and transformed a decent round into a mediocre one. It hurt.

“I don’t like to have them back,” remarked Harrington of the loose shots in his second round 72 for 142 that left him 12 shots adrift of Snedeker, “but, no, that’s golf. That’s the nature of the game.”

McIlroy – who fell to a second round 75 to also reach the mid-point on 142 – pinpointed the double-bogey five on the par-three ninth hole as his undoing.

There seemed to be distractions around the tee, including a nearby house alarm and a truck outside the boundary fence, but McIlroy simply put his hand up and accepted the blame for a tee shot that pulled into a greenside trap and took him to escape.

“It wasn’t the best day,” accepted McIlroy. “I was doing pretty well just to hang around, making a double on the ninth was the turning point. I couldn’t really recover from that.”

Indeed, the notorious bunkers proved to be a sore point for McIlroy. He found four of them – on the sixth, ninth, 12th and 17th – and dropped shots on each hole as a consequence. On the 17th, his ball was submerged in water in a fairway bunker and, after taking a free drop in the trap, the ball got plugged on the downslope. He could only pitch out sideways.

The problem? “I wasn’t committing to my tee shots and I was in two minds a few times about what shots to hit off the tees. I need to really commit and try to get the ball in the fairway,” said McIlroy, who finished with a seven-iron approach to eight feet but missed the putt for birdie on the 18th to send him off to the practice range with something to work on. No doubt, he shared the belief of Harrington that something big would be required in today’s third round.

As Harrington put it, “you’d be hoping that your playing partner plays really well and the two of you could go along like that. You see putts going in, it’s easier to make putts yourself. Hopefully that will be the case, that we’ll all charge up the leaderboard. We’re all for believing it, hopefully.”

It’s a tough ask, for both McIlroy and Harrington. But miracles sometimes happen.