Harrington<\/a>, heads the field alongside Steve Stricker, Stewart Cink, Zach Johnson, Miguel Angel Jimenez and Ernie Els.<\/p>\nHarrington closed a double bogey seeing him fall six shots behind the top of the leaderboard at The Concession Golf Club.<\/p>\n
It had been a quiet round for P\u00e1draig Harrington, who sat at one over par after 14 holes following bogeys at the sixth and 13th, with his only birdie coming at the ninth.<\/p>\n
However, he reignited his challenge with a superb run of three consecutive birdies at 15, 16 and 17, briefly boosting his hopes of landing a third senior major title.<\/p>\n
Those hopes were dented on the final hole, though, as a costly double bogey at the 18th dropped him back to four under, leaving him to card a level-par 72.<\/p>\n
Australian Scott Henderson and American Brian Gay currently top the leaderboard at the tournament.<\/p>\n
Harrington was in the news, ahead of the tournament, praising recently-crowned two-time Masters champion Rory McIlroy.<\/p>\n
\u201cRory could win 10 of them at this stage, or five of them, anyway,\u201d said Harrington.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe probably will still be competitive at 50 years of age around that golf course. For him, it was interesting that he won that one with his short game, which makes him even better a player.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s always been a superb chipper, but now it\u2019s with the putting and things like that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cA very rounded game and a game that looks like it has a lot of longevity in it. So, he\u2019s in a very nice place going forward, particularly at that tournament that you would think.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing when you win one, that he\u2019s now got two, and we\u2019re thinking that maybe two or three or five would be realistic around that golf course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrington went on to praise his performance when the pressure was on at the Masters: \u201cHe showed some real good character there.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, psychology-wise he really won that tournament. His mentality and how he went about things, that\u2019s a very strong showing for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe obviously still has the physical side of the game, but to show that short game and the mental side of the game means he looks like he would be a very strong force for a while to come in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Click here to sign up to our sport newsletter, bringing you the top stories and biggest headlines from Ireland and beyond<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott Henderson and Brian Gay lead at the Championship. Padraig Harrington tees off on the second hole.(Image: Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,17106,13401,2623,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-538705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-padraig-harrington","10":"tag-pga","11":"tag-rory-mcilroy","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Padraig](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0_GettyImages-2271211618.jpg\")
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