GOLF: Padraig Harrington began the new European Tour season in perfect fashion with a nervy, one-shot victory at the BMW Asian Open in Taiwan yesterday.

The Dubliner shot a last-round 69 for a 15-under-par total of 273, one better than India's Jyoti Randhawa, to claim his sixth tour title.

The win leaves him €247,967 better off, and rockets him straight to the top of the 2003 Order of Merit after what was officially the first counting event.

But 31-year-old, who began the final day a shot behind Maarten Lafeber, had to overcome a late case of the jitters to seal his second win of the year, after his Dunhill Links Championship win in October.

In control and seemingly strolling to victory, Harrington contrived to almost throw all his hard work away, first by finding water off the 16th tee with a 314-yard three-wood.

He managed to get up and down for a par there, but then left a straightforward chip 20 feet short on the next, from where he could make only bogey.

That left him with just a one-shot cushion playing the 18th, a difficult par three at the best of times, and he looked to be stumbling towards a play-off when he blocked a six-iron right of the green.

A mediocre chip then left him with a 10-foot putt up the hill for the title, and after the ball scraped into the hole with virtually its last roll the relief felt by Harrington, who knows more than most the disappointment of a runner-up, was plain to see.

Afterwards he revealed his late slip had been triggered by breaking a golden rule.

"It was only when I got to the 15th green that I looked at the scoreboard - I don't watch scoreboards at all, but I looked because my round had got a little bit static and I was looking for something to get it going," he said.

"Unfortunately it had the reverse effect and all of a sudden I got defensive. Before I looked at the board I was thinking I would need to get to 17 or 18 under, but then I saw the nearest to me was on 14, so that's probably why I became defensive. It can be very dangerous to watch scoreboards!"

Harrington had seized the early initiative with birdies at the second, fifth, sixth and seventh to open a three-shot gap, before being pegged back by a bogey at the ninth. He bounced straight back though with a birdie at the next and then parred in before his late blip.

And Harrington, who was forced to play an eight-iron left-handed when restricted by a tree on the ninth - the second such shot he has played in the last three weeks after encountering a similar problem at the Volvo Masters - felt his winning putt would give him much confidence in the future.

"Most tournaments end with someone having two putts to win on the last - you don't often get the opportunity to hole a putt to win - and I did walk up to the putt thinking 'now here's your opportunity to go for glory'.

"It was nice to hole it and it'll be good for confidence in the future - I certainly willed it in for the last roll up the hill."

Harrington's nervy finish almost completed an extraordinary recovery for Randhawa, who after starting the day seven shots off the pace fired a flawless, eight-under-par 64 to storm up the leaderboard.

It was a familiar story for Lafeber, though, three shots back on 12-under 276 after a 73, who has now failed to win any of the three events in the past six weeks - after the Lancome Trophy and the Madrid Open - he has led at the halfway stage.

South African Trevor Immelman, who had looked in superb form all week, could hardly keep out of trouble and finished on 12 under after a 72, alongside American Andrew Pitts, followed by Thailand's Thongchai Jaidee on 11 under with Ian Woosnam a shot back.