Harrington steals the show

Who wants to win a golf tournament any more? There was a time when no-one remembered who finished second. Not any more, it seems. The trend was set by Jean Van de Velde at Carnoustie, and continued by Sergio Garcia at Medinah. Yesterday, at the Golfclub Nord-Eichenried, a course with giant electric pylons criss-crossing the holes as if to guarantee static tension, it was Padraig Harrington's turn to steal the show. "Remember to make a note at the end of your report that I won the tournament," quipped Colin Montgomerie, winner for the fifth time on the European Tour this season. Typically, the Scot's winning performance was exemplary: a final round 70 for 20-under-par 268 gave him a three-stroke winning margin over Harrington, but even Monty was content to let the Irishman - who secured his Ryder Cup debut - take the limelight.

And how he deserved it.

After four holes, Harrington was on the rocks and in danger of falling into storm waters and drowning. Four over par for the day, and playing and thinking like a Sunday club hacker rather than a potential Ryder Cup player, or indeed a tournament winner, he was in deep trouble. "I couldn't focus. I was playing negative golf, far too defensive," remarked Harrington. "Instead of watching Colin, I was watching Jean-Francois (Remesy) and listening to the crowd for what was happening to other guys ahead of me."

Such distractions were proving costly. Having started the day one shot adrift of Montgomerie, a run of bogey-bogey-double bogey from the second to the fourth holes increased the gap to five shots. More worryingly for the Dubliner, players' ahead - among them Jarrod Moseley and John Bickerton - had hauled him in and passed him out. Harrington's double bogey six at the fourth could have wrecked the confidence of a lesser willed person. "I thought my approach was going to finish dead," he recalled. Instead, it clipped a tree branch, still found the green behind the flag but spun back into the water. The slope was so slick that he even had trouble replacing the ball. He pitched to five feet, but missed the putt. "I was pretty low at that point," he said.

Even Monty was distracted. "I just got caught up with what was happening to Padraig," admitted the Scot, "and I lost my concentration. When he was four over after four holes, I gave myself a target of 20 under to win. And I achieved that. But Padraig did really well to recover from that start. He had opened the door wide for one or two others, including Mark James, but he came back strongly and all credit to him for that. He had a job to do, and did it."

It wasn't easy, however. But muscles that had tightened with tension over the first few holes began to relax. His body language improved, and a birdie at the seventh hole - although followed by a bogey at the short eight - steadied the ship. But it was the birdie at the ninth hole that gave him most confidence. "A big, big birdie," he stated. "I hadn't played well for the front nine, but I felt I had weathered the storm after that birdie."

The fightback had started, and the 11th hole was again kind to him. For the previous two rounds, he had eagled it. Yesterday, his drive was pushed into the first cut of rough but he bravely opted to use a four-wood. Fortune favoured him, and he sent it on a low flight path over the water hazard to 15 feet. Confidence regained, Harrington rolled in the eagle putt and his fate was again in his own hands.

Knowing that a second-place finish would be sufficient to earn him an automatic place on the European team for Brookline, Harrington gave himself a number of birdie chances. All of them agonisingly shaved the hole, until the 16th - a short par 4 - where he hit his approach to 12 feet. He holed the birdie putt and, almost simultaneously, Bickerton up ahead bogeyed the short 17th.

Australian Moseley was now his chief rival for second place, and he birdied the last to move to 16-underpar (one behind Harrington). Having parred the 17th, where he was again unlucky with his birdie putt, Harrington broke his habit and looked at the scoreboard. "I wanted to know exactly what I needed to do on the last," he said.

Realising a par on the 18th would suffice, Harrington shelved any macho inclinations. He used a three-iron off the tee, but pushed the shot into heavy rough. The drama wasn't over. With a drain crossing the fairway, he had no option other than to play out short of it. And his four-iron approach was pulled left of the green. But his short game rescued him, and a fine up-and-down gave him a par. He coaxed his five foot putt at Montgomerie's marker two inches outside the hole, and watched it drop in. Little was he to know that a bogey would have got him onto the team anyway.

"I got defensive again on the final hole. I would like to have finished in a bit better style, but I did the job," said Harrington, who finished with a final round 72 for 271, a shot ahead of Moseley. Bickerton finished another stroke back in fourth, while closing rounds of 65 for Robert Karlsson, the player on the bubble heading into the final counting event, proved insufficient.

And what of Monty? His win took him through the £1 million prizemoney barrier for the season - "Not bad for August, is it?" he asked - and, having covered the front nine in 37, he came back with three birdies. The 14th hole proved decisive, where he hit a six-iron approach to 25 feet and holed the putt, to go four clear. "It was a quiet, safe day after that," said the Scot, who is now well on course for a record seventh Order of Merit title.