Pádraig Harrington was pleased to see his patience rewarded after birdies on 16 and 17 saw him edge into a one-shot lead heading into the final round of the TimberTech Championship.
Harrington carded a bogey-free 66 to climb to nine-under-par and one clear of David Toms and Bernhard Langer, the latter shooting a superb 63. Ernie Els is a shot further back.
The three-time major winner made a blistering start with three birdies in his opening six holes but carded nine successive pars before finally making a fourth birdies of the day on the par-5 16th. Birdies are like buses and after waiting ten holes for one, two came along at once as he made it back-to-back gains on 17 to hit the front.
“It felt great because I played really well early on, should have been more than three under par,” said Harrington. Then I kind of hit a wall in the middle of the round, good shots didn’t go as close, I missed a few putts didn’t hit as many good shots, I wasn’t feeling good about the round, I was feeling like I left a lot behind, but birdies at 16 and 17 makes me feel like I got the most out. It’s amazing how it shows I stayed patient in some way, but those two last birdies certainly make my dinner a lot sweeter.”
The Dubliner who ran Steven Alker close in the Schwab Cup race last year feels it was one of those rounds where he had to be patient and wait for a break to go his way after his momentum had stalled.
“Yeah, you’ve got to wait your turn, Golf is a bit like that, you try and play well all the time, but you get places in a week or in a round where you just have to struggle along and maybe hold a few putt for par. Then you hope to keep yourself in there, then you get a little run where you might make three birdies at four holes. You know, get a nice run, you might make six birdies at nine, something like that, that’s the way you’ve got to play the game. You can’t, it doesn’t always fall into place no matter what you do yourself, so you just kind of have to just wait for the happen. “
Harrington will have a catalogue of players chasing him tomorrow but he hopes a final round battle between himself and Langer can materialise.
“Bernhard is obviously a dangerous man when he’s nearly in the lead, he’s obviously playing well. 8 under par was a fine score today, so I know I won’t have it easy tomorrow, but hopefully it will burn out. So hopefully the two of us can kind of get moving forward, that the ideal situation would be, well not the ideal situation, but a good situation would be if the two of us play well enough that, you know, we move away from the rest of the field and maybe we’ve got between the two of us with four or five holes to go.”
Darren Clarke made a move up the leaderboard into a share of 20th on two-under after a blemish free round of 65.
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