Padraig Harrington cruised to his sixth Ladbrokes.com PGA Irish championship victory at the European Club yesterday after a closing one over par 72 gave him a seven-shot margin of victory over former British Amateur champion Brian McElhinney.

However, the world No 12 remained doubtful that his long game will be able to stand up to the test of Turnberry’s Ailsa links at this week’s Open Championship.

Asked if he was heading to Scotland in trepidation or in confidence, he said: “Definitely trepidation. My preparation hasn’t been right for this one so it is definitely a shot in the dark. I can’t expect much but I can hope for it.” It’s not that he played poorly on a difficult track, where he was the only player to finish under par after 72 gruelling holes. But what the Dubliner will produce in the long game department remains a mystery.

In the final round he mixed four birdies with three bogeys and a double bogey six at the seventh hole, where he pulled his three wood into deep rough.

“My long game was poorer than it has been all year,” he said. “It was at its worst this week but I am hoping it is just a blip. My putting has let me down this year but that has been excellent this week. I avoided a three-putt this week, which is something I haven’t been doing.

“The number one priority is getting the head in the right place for any major tournament and that’s a key. I still have work to do on a few things and hopefully over the next couple of days I will have settled on some key for the week that will keep my mind occupied.”

The Dubliner has struggled badly with the driver this season, no more so than in the US Open on the Black Course at Bethpage State Park last month, where he hit just 11 of 28 fairways (39.29%) to finish second last in the driving accuracy statistics.

He only used his driver four times at the European Club — at the par-five 13th in each round — but it was his form with the three wood that gave cause for concern as he attacked some of the longer holes and he needs quietness of mind to contend this week for a place in history.

He will not have received that from his postman, who, Harrington admitted last week, had recently been moved to pose the question: “Padraig, how come you’re playing so crap?” The Open champion of 2007 and 2008, who is also the US PGA champion, has missed six cuts in his past eight tournaments and his most recent top-10 finish, tied for fifth place in the Abu Dhabi championship, was back in January in his first outing of the season. It is hard to believe now but at the start of the year people were talking up Harrington’s chances of adding The Masters and US Open to his Open and PGA titles.

“I’ve been getting well-wishers coming up to give me advice and other people making different suggestions while some strange letters have arrived in the post,” he revealed. “There was one about me going out there and doing military-style physical training and another to wash my body in salt to make sure that I can get rid of all the radiation.

“Probably the funniest instance involved somebody who is close to me and I’m not going to mention who it was but she was at my house and my son, Ciaran, had run into the rough on the course outside. Somebody asked, ‘Oh, where is Ciaran?’ and this person made the comment, ‘Oh, he’s like his dad, he’s in the rough.’ And the person was a non-golfer, so she had obviously heard about my form this season from somebody else.”

But Harrington is no quitter, so he will arrive at Turnberry in the firm belief that a reversal of fortune is only a series of straight drives away. Since 1882, only Australia’s Peter Thomson has managed to win The Open Championship three years in succession but, outside of Tiger Woods, Harrington is one of less than a handful of current players to have won three majors and the desire to win more remains as strong as ever.

“I’m very aware that myself, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and Vijay Singh are the only competitive players who have won three majors outside of Tiger and the next major which is won by one of the three of us will set that player apart,” Harrington declared. “My attitude is that I’m the youngest of these four players who have won three majors and are currently competing. Winning three is incredibly different to winning two. Mathematically, if you did the odds of it happening, the chances of winning a third are exponentially much higher. So I’m looking forward to my future in majors and I feel like I will win more.

“I don’t feel like I have to worry about Tiger Woods. I know if he plays his very best golf, he’s unbelievable. But if you look through his career, he doesn’t average two majors a year, so that means there are two for everybody else to shoot at each year at least. So far this year it’s been proved, with Angel Cabrera winning The Masters and Lucas Glover taking the US Open. I believe that I can be one of this number.

“There is plenty of room for everybody else and I think you’ve got to accept the fact that there are plenty of opportunities even when Tiger Woods is in the field.”

Additional reporting by Brian Keogh

Where it’s all gone wrong for Harrington

Harrington missed the cut in five consecutive tour events before winning the low-key Irish PGA Championship yesterday — a dire run of form for a man aiming to be world No 1. As figures from the US tour show, his game has slumped:

Driving distance
-2008: 296.3 yds (32nd)
-2009: 282.6 yds (122nd)

Driving accuracy
-2008: 59.4% (154th)
-2009: 52.8% (176th)

Greens in regulation
-2008: 60.67% (186th)
-2009: 60.06% (179th)

Putting average
-2008: 1.74 (5th)
-2009: 1.79 (131st)