US PGA 3rd round report: Harrington comes alive to stay in the running

PADRAIG Harrington has cut a pretty disconsolate shape this week at Oakland Hills, hardly raising a smile as he explained the many things that ailed his challenge for the PGA title. Lordy, lordy, the poor man has been suffering. His head wasn't right, he said. His focus was all over the place, his chances of winning miniscule. If you listened to his post-round interviews on Thursday and Friday you'd swear all he wanted to do was get on a plane and go home, such was his downbeat demeanour

Well, the double Open champion is bang in contention to win here after a blistering 66 in his rain-delayed third round. Harrington's game came alive in spectacular fashion from the 13th hole this morning, a trappy par-3, which he birdied to go to 3-under for the tournament. He followed that up with more birdies on the 14th, 15th and the 16th, the very hole that Andres Romero (who shot 65 on Saturday) took eight at on Friday. Four in a row, then. A smile threatened to break across the Irishman's face at that point.

He bogeyed the last - hardly alone there, the hole is a brute - so Harrington finished on 1-over, beautifully positioned behind the leaders, former Open champion Ben Curtis on 2-under, the improving Henrik Stenson and the big-hitting but painfully slow-moving JB Holmes on 1-under. Harrington is level with Sergio Garcia who only got to play a solitary hole of his third round on Saturday. He was up at first light and went round in 69.

Harrington should have been pumped-up but he wasn't. Not by a long way. "Right at this moment, it's disappointing," he said. "I bogeyed the last. Good tee shot and good second shot which I thought was going to give me a good birdie chance and I messed up the bunker shot. I'm a little disappointed as I had a good birdie chance on the 17th and chances on 10, 11 and 12. It was a slow start to the second part of my round but the four birdies in the middle got it going and I holed some putts in that run which was nice to see happening and get some feeling on the greens."

The course was playing a lot easier today. All that rain has softened it up and left it at mercy of the birdie-hunters. It's like a different track now, unrecognisable from the savage layout of Thursday and Friday. How is Harrington's mindset now? "Not anywhere near where I could be. But who knows. Last round of a major, you don't know. I keep approaching every shot hopeful it will click into place.Just the whole thing. Still losing my focus at times and I know how I stand and I am not 100% but a couple of things go your way and you don't need to be 100%. I am delighted to be in the position I am and give myself some chance. I am disappointed as I feel I have left many shots out there over the three days but that doesn't matter if I am in the heat of the hunt with nine holes to go this afternoon. It will all be decided on the back nine."

For the final round they're going out in threeballs, Harrington being in the second last group with Garcia and Charlie Wi. The Spaniard is another fine story on a leaderboard not short of decent yarns. Curtis's re-emergence at this level is a fairytale and all of Sweden will be on tenterhooks now waiting to see if Stenson can become their major championship winner, a feat that put him in the annals of his country's most beloved sportsmen.

Garcia's presence gives the final round added excitement. Like Harrington, he bogeyed the final hole of his third round but wasn't nearly as flat about it as the Dubliner. "It's one of those things," he said. "It's a tough finishing hole. You know that can happen. I've just got to keep believing in myself. Hopefully I'll get out there and get something going. The course is much softer. The greens are more receptive. You can shoot a pretty decent score. But it's quite windy also so the course is playing really long."

By close of business today Garcia will have played 35 holes, a fair old test of his fitness and resilience. "I feel good, I feel comfortable. When I was little I remember playing 54 holes one day, when I was about 10 or 12. It's fine. Obviously it's a little bit more pressure and that's what can tire you a bit more than anything else. I've just got to stay strong mentally."

Justin Rose, one of the great European hopes, overnight fell away in his third round, signing for a 74 (4-over) which included a disastrous seven at the par-4 11th hole and a double bogey six at the dangerous 16th. He's not out of it but he'll need to shift it something serious in his final round. Stenson is the third hot property from Europe, along with Harrington and Garcia.

Stenson and Harrington are good mates. Indeed, Stenson stayed by the 18th green at Royal Birkdale on the Sunday so he could be one of the first to congratulate his pal on winning the Open last month. "I wanted to be there for him," said the Swede. "You can suck up a little bit of the atmosphere and it was great to be around the 18th green that afternoon. Hopefully one day I'll be very close, very soon. That's what we want."

Well, he's close now. Stenson did something extraordinary, he finished it with a birdie on 18. He was the only player in the entire field to conquer the 18th in the third cound. "Yeah, it was a tricky tee shot and it's one of the hardest holes out there, if not the hardest hole on the golf course. And I went for a 3-wood off the tee, hit that one good and just the breeze took it a little bit and it ended up in the right semi-rough. I played a flat-out 3-iron from there to about eight or 10 feet and then rolled it in up the hill. A great finish."

That's what we're looking at later, a huge conclusion to a championship that really struggled to excite for two days but which gained some momentum after the storms took the heat out of the greens and loosened its previously iron-clad defences. The rejuventated Curtis leads the tournament but three Europeans are tucked in his slipstream and all of them are very dangerous opponents.