GOLF: Ten members of the victorious European Ryder Cup team pitched up in Fife for the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, no doubt tempted by a prize fund that is the fourth biggest on the European Tour outside the majors and the World Golf Championships.
And, just to underline the inherent unpredictability of the game Scotland gave to the world, the man who made off with the €630,566 winner's cheque was the only one of the 10 who could not muster as much as a point on behalf of the home team at The K Club.
For all that, and for the second time in four years, Padraig Harrington is a fitting winner of the tour's biggest pro-am tournament. As one of the slowest players in professional golf, it is more than apt that he should prosper in what is surely the sport's most interminable event. Yesterday Harrington and his playing companion Bradley Dredge - admittedly hampered by the presence of two amateur partners including the all-conquering JP McManus - took a snail-like five hours and 30 minutes to complete 18 holes over the Old Course at St Andrews. So slow was their play that legendary local Tom Morris would have had time to change his nickname from "Young" to "Old".
Not that it bothered Harrington, after a closing 68 took him to 16 under par and left him five strokes ahead of Dredge, the American Edward Loar and Anthony Wall of England. Not only was this his first victory on the European Tour since 2004 (albeit he won twice on the US PGA Tour last year), the sizeable boost to his bank account also sent the 35-year-old Dubliner up to second place on the Order of Merit table with two counting events left, next week's Mallorca Classic and the season-ending Volvo Masters.
Only Harrington's Ryder Cup team-mate Paul Casey - whose 68 yesterday hauled him up to a tie for sixth spot here - remains above him in the race to be Europe's number one player for 2006. The distance between the two is €218,183, enough to prompt the Irishman into booking a flight to Majorca.
"With that big a gap, I have to go," he felt. "I haven't done that well in the Volvo Masters in the past, so I need to give myself the best possible chance. For now, though, I am delighted to come back here and win. It's been 15 months or so since I managed to do that. I'm happy with the way I did it too. I played great yesterday (on Saturday, when he shot 68 in deteriorating weather at Carnoustie) and backed it up today." The key moment in Harrington's victory came at the short 11th. Having found the fearsome fate that is the Strath bunker from the tee, Dredge was forced to play his second shot back towards the tee and away from the flag. At that point the Welshman's caddie began to smooth out the footprints his man had made, a move that provoked Harrington to question whether such action constituted "improving the line of one's shot" under the game's often arcane rules. Happily, there was no penalty involved, even if the R&A rules official adjudicating got it wrong by telling Dredge he would be docked a shot only if he knocked his ball back into the sand.
Anyway, what came to pass was a three-shot swing in Harrington's favour. As Dredge stumbled to a double bogey, the Irishman holed from 10 feet for a crucial birdie. Thereafter, the gap between first and second was never less than those three shots. "That was important," Harrington observed. "That three-shot edge allowed me to play safely to the left off the tee over the closing holes."
Wexford's Damien McGrane shot a closing 69 for a seven-under-par 280 to claim joint 15th place and a cheque for €49,292
