Rónán MacNamara at Royal Troon
Pádraig Harrington lamented a few missed chances on the back nine but was pleased to recover from a poor start which saw him begin his 152nd Open Championship campaign with a one-over 72 at Royal Troon.
Harrington, a two-time Claret Jug winner, opened his round with back-to-back bogeys but played very solidly for the remainder, getting back to plus one through ten holes with birdies on 7 and 10 either side of a third bogey on 9.
The 52-year-old passed up good birdie opportunities on the 13th and 15th before three-putting the par-5 16th for a par and he felt unlucky not to pick up a shot on 18 and get back to level par.
“I played okay, even for the first couple of holes. I was a bit unlucky on the 1st. Bunker shot should have stopped, and it went four feet by and I missed it, which wasn’t great. Good chip on the 2nd,” explained the three-time major winner who shares 30th place.
“After that I played very solid all the way. Kept it in play very nicely, hit lots of nice shots.
“It’s always going to be difficult to get it really close. It was disappointing on the last for that one to lip out. Would have been nice to get back to level-par, maybe the three-putt on 16 from off the front. A couple of those, I would have liked to get it back to level-par. Certainly felt I could have.
“Maybe I’m just a little disappointed with the score at the end, could have been easy a 1-under from where I hit it coming home. I was in a lot of good places coming home. 13 I missed. 15, I didn’t hit a good pitch in there. I definitely could have made, you know, a few more birdies for sure.”
Harrington has long wished for one more crack at a major title down the back nine on Sunday and while he couldn’t be ruled out in such a scenario the difficult part for the veteran is to actually put himself into such a position again but at plus one and six shots behind Shane Lowry with just seventeen players under-par as it stands he is in the mix.
“I just play every shot as it comes. You try and figure it out at the end of the day. I’ll get up in the morning and approach it the same way, hit each shot and see what happens,” said Harrington.
“Some days they go in and it’s all happy days, other days it’s a little tougher. I won’t be doing anything different tomorrow. I’ll be just playing my game.
“Yeah, it’s not like we’re expecting to get out in the morning and there’s no wind or something like that, and it’s not like I’m playing at 6:00 in the morning or something like that. I don’t see — in my head, it’s just going to be the same all day tomorrow. I don’t see that coming out early — it’s not like the greens putt any better in the morning than in the afternoon. It’s kind of all the same here.”
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