Harrington in the hunt at USPGA

OPEN champion Padraig Harrington was happy to put a frustrating opening round behind him at the 90th US PGA Championship and still remain in contention at Oakland Hills.

Harrington carded a one-over-par 71 to sit just three shots behind first round co-leaders Robert Karlsson and Jeev Milkha Singh as the Irishman heads into today's second round.

He had made a flying start with a hat-trick of birdies only to have four bogeys between the seventh and 13th holes. Harrington bounced back with a birdie at the 14th to return to level par as play was suspended by rain and the threat of lightning for 83 minutes. When play resumed, Harrington dropped another shot at the long par-three 17th but rescued par at 18 with a superb approach shot from the semi-rough to inches from the hole.

"I was trying to calm down," said Harrington after marching straight to the putting green after signing his card.

"It felt like I played a lot better than 71. I really struggled on the greens and I had a number of putts that the hole lipped out on, so it made me feel like I was putting a lot worse than I was, maybe.

"Then it even got a little bit into my longer game towards the end of the round as I was getting a bit more frustrated."

Now Harrington has to convince himself that he emerged from his day's work still in with a chance of securing back-to-back major victories. "The score is good," he added. "

This is all you want in the first round. You want to keep yourself in there. It's all about staying patient for the first three days."

Singh must hope the streak of injured major champions can continue. That Singh, 36, leads the field while wearing a brace to try and alleviate tendon pain in his right ankle could bode well, given that Tiger Woods won the US Open in June with a cruciate knee ligament damage and a double stress fracture of his tibia and Harrington defended his Open title with an injured wrist that almost prevented him from playing at Royal Birkdale last month.

"I've been suffering with a little tendon running through the ankle on my right foot, it's got a lot of pain," said Singh.

"I've been wearing a brace for the last four weeks.

"I did injure it just before the French Open, that was about seven, eight weeks ago. I've been getting a lot of physio done, and it gets better. But you hit one of those shots out of the rough, and I'm back to square one."

After suffering the injury, Singh won both the Austrian Open and an event in Japan but he admits he is playing in Detroit against doctor's orders after undergoing an MRI scan three weeks ago.

"The doctor said I need four weeks off and the caution I put up to him was, 'Well, does two weeks help?'

"He said 'no'. He said there's a lot of fluid and that means a lot of inflammation in there.

"Then I decided if I'm going to play the PGA Championship I'm going to push myself through to this week and next week and after that I'm surely taking two weeks off, maybe I'm going to extend it to four.

"It depends how the ankle holds up. It feels fine. But the more drivers I hit, I feel it just kind of comes back, and you do need to hit a lot of drivers on this golf course."

Paisley's Alastair Forsyth hit a three-over 73 while Colin Montgomerie struggled to a 76.