No longer the bridesmaid

The matador must demonstrate patience and bravery, only pouncing when the moment is absolutely right. Padraig Harrington, after a season littered with seven runners-up places, and a somewhat fragile confidence, can probably empathise better than most with the importance of such knife-edge decision-making, but, in choosing the season-ending Volvo Masters at Montecastillo to record his first win of the year, his timing was simply perfect.

It didn't matter that the championship was curtailed to 54-holes, with Saturday effectively consigned to the dustbin due to high winds. On a dry and coldish day, with a testing breeze rather than the all-out gales of the previous day, what did matter was that the 30-year-old Dubliner delivered his greatest success when the pressure was on.

A dramatic, final-hole birdie for a closing 66 and a 12-under-par total of 204 gave him a one-stroke victory over Paul McGinley, who will be transformed from foe to friend for this week's World Cup in Japan.

Darren Clarke, who had been nip-and-tuck with the two other Irish players throughout the round, but who possessed a stone-cold putter on the homeward run, suffered a watery grave on the 16th, where he pushed his five-iron approach into the lake. He finished three strokes adrift in tied-fourth.

For Harrington, it represented his fourth European Tour career win, and his third in Spain. But this victory in one of the European Tour's flagship tournaments and was thus a personal milestone.

"As a kid, you always dream of holing a birdie putt on the last hole to win a tournament. This is a big deal for me, by far the biggest win of my career," he remarked.

All day Saturday, after finishing their second rounds in the early morning sunlight, Harrington and McGinley - who had a two-shot lead on the field - and the rest of the field were forced to wait around the putting greens and driving range, before being told that play was suspended.

So, instead of attempting to play 36 holes in one day (impossible because of the amount of available daylight) or extending play to the Monday, everyone was aware that the delayed third round would also be the final round.

It was a drama-filled, and very Irish, showdown.

McGinley, who set off protecting his two-shot cushion, was actually five strokes clear of Harrington when he birdied the third. In contrast, Harrington's start was edgy. A three-putt bogey on the second, followed by another three-putt on the third, where he had a 20-footer for eagle but walked away with a par, had Harrington, as he explained later, "not feeling too well".

Five behind the leader, with Clarke and others closing in, Harrington's response was to fire eight birdies in 14 holes from the fifth. A solitary bogey came at the 13th, a hole that cost him four shots in the three rounds, but even that didn't deflect him from the task at hand.

Only the young Australian Adam Scott managed to infiltrate the battle between the Irish triumvirate in the foothills outside Jerez. Scott came home in 31 shots, including a run of three successive birdies from the 10th, for a finishing 65 for 10-under-par 206 to set the clubhouse mark.

While Scott was working his way through the field, the impetus seemed to be with Clarke. He reached the turn in 32, shooting four birdies to move into the on-course lead on 10 under. But when Clarke's 18-foot eagle putt on the ninth lipped out, leaving him a tap-in birdie, it was to be his last birdie of the round.

One birdie chance after another slipped by on the homeward run and, waiting on the 16th fairway, he could look to the green and see Harrington miss his eagle putt but hole the four-footer for birdie to take the lead. A few minutes later, Clarke's five-iron approach found the water and finished his ambitions.

Harrington, meanwhile, had long since found his A-game. The run was kick-started on the eighth hole, where he hit a four-iron tee shot to the right of the green, skirting with the water. But he holed the 20-footer for birdie and, after finding a bunker off the tee on the ninth, with no option other than to play back out up the fairway, his eight-iron approach to eight-feet was coolly holed.

He was on a roll.

On the 10th, he made it a hat-trick by rolling in a 12-footer, and, from fighting to stay in touch, he was very much back in the picture. That bogey on the 13th was merely a hiccup - and he rolled in another eight-footer for birdie on the 15th, followed by the two-putt birdie on the 16th.

And, although they were playing in different three-balls, it became a head-to-head between Harrington and McGinley over the closing stretch.

McGinley, who had suffered three bogeys in a five-hole spell from the fourth, worked his way back into contention with a birdie at the ninth and an eagle at the 12th, where he holed a 35-footer. On that same hole, Clarke's putting woes were cruelly exposed when he attempted to follow McGinley in for an eagle, but ended up three-putting.

When McGinley birdied the 16th, however, to move alongside Harrington on 11-under, it all came down to who would crack first, or, more likely on a day of superb golf, who would produce the moment of magic that would be the difference.

The difference turned out to be a touch of putting magic from Harrington, on the 18th, with his new Odyssey 2Ball putter. His huge three-wood tee-shot left him with just a wedge approach that was dispatched directly towards the flag. The ball, however, spun back, leaving him with a do-or-die 25 footer for birdie.

"I bombed it," said Harrington later, "it hit the back of the hole with an almighty thump."

With the ball still a yard from the hole, though, he knew it was in and started pumping the air.

The amphitheatre around the green erupted, and Harrington had finally, and sensationally, ditched the bridesmaid's tag that had haunted him all season.

McGinley, in the group behind, couldn't help but hear the roar, and knew what was required of him. All that would do to force a play-off was a birdie, and he gave it his best shot. But the 40-foot putt slid agonisingly by the right of the cup.

Harrington, after a season of near misses, was finally the one to be crowned champion, the third Irish winner (along with Ronan Rafferty and Clarke) of the Volvo Masters.