On their respective flights back home from Chicago, Padraig Harrington - tied-10th - and Darren Clarke - tied-42nd - had much to mull over, but the thoughts swirling around in their heads were miles apart.

Harrington, at least, left Olympia Fields in positive mood insisting, "I know where I am going with my game," while, in stark contrast, Clarke was like a broken man in admitting: "I'm at my wits' end."

Both intend to go into a sort of mid-summer hibernation - for two weeks - before reappearing on the circuit for the European Open at the K Club in the first week of July, a course and tournament which has been kind to the pair in the recent past. For Clarke, it would seem a return to a happy hunting ground is a much-needed tonic at this juncture of his season.

Clarke has undertaken many changes in his quest to make himself a better player - working with the sports psychologist Bob Rotella, hiring a personal trainer and starting a new diet - but, after his final round on Sunday, he was clearly frustrated with his inability to capitalise on good play tee-to-green. Once he gets onto the putting surface, it seems he is simply waiting for all of his good work to be undone, so little faith has he in his putting.

"Do you know, I just have no idea any more. I've tried everything," revealed Clarke. "I cannot compete in any golf tournament if I don't capitalise on my play and if I don't make the putts on the green. I'm not doing that. I have got no idea, no feel, no nothing. I really don't know, have no idea, what's going on. I am at my wits' end."

Clarke's obvious frustration after completing his ninth US Open championship - he has had just one top-10 finish and one other top-25 finish - has most to do with his putting. The routine he has adopted since the Players Championship in March, whereby he lines up the putt and hardly spends any time standing over the ball before putting, was developed with Rotella and, before this latest championship, he seriously considered changing back to his old, more orthodox routine. Much of the next two weeks is likely to be spent considering such an option again.

For Harrington, who backed into a top-10 finish with the second-lowest round of the final day's play (only Kenny Perry, with a 67 to Harrington's 68, went lower), the championship proved to be more fulfilling.

"It could have been better," he conceded, "and I didn't really putt well enough all week. But I've got a good idea of where I am at and what I need to do to make my game better generally. I'm leaving this week very positively, not necessarily because of my finish here, but because of where I am going with my game."

Harrington made a phone call home before boarding his plane on Sunday evening which confirmed he had moved into a top-10 finish - his third in the past four US Opens - but he remarked, "It doesn't matter whether I'm 20th, 10th or fifth, the only place I want to be is number one."

He added: "However, I believe I am a better player technically than I was a year ago and this US Open is one of those experiences where you walk away and say, 'yes, I learned something from that'. I know that overall I am a better player and the one area I need to work on more is my mental game."

In terms of the experiment of playing for the two weeks before the US Open, Harrington said he didn't think that will happen again. "I struggled to read the greens and that is usually a sign of fatigue." He also claimed he had possibly done too much work on his game during the preceding two weeks, which contributed to the tiredness.

"I wasn't as sharp as I would like to have been. I won't say that I won't ever play the two weeks before a major again but, if I did, I wouldn't work as hard. I like to play the week before a major, except for the British Open because that tournament is not on a links course, but this was an experiment (playing three in succession in the US) and that's how you learn," said Harrington, whose tied-10th finish earned him prize money of $124,936.

Like Clarke, Harrington's next competitive appearance will be in the European Open, after which he will take another week off before playing in the British Open at Royal St George's in Sandwich, followed by the Irish Open at Portmarnock.

"After that, my next tournament could well be the US PGA (at Oak Hill, upstate New York in late August)," contended Harrington: his schedule depends on the time of the birth of the couple's first child, which is due the day after the PGA.