Harrington sees benefit of missed cut
Padraig Harrington is planning some well-earned rest over the next few days rather than dwelling on his missed cut at The Barclays.
Exhaustion finally caught up with the Irishman at Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey as he shot a second-round, two-over-par 73 that left him three over for the tournament, two shots the wrong side of the halfway cut.
The exertions of winning both The Open and US PGA Championships within four weeks of each other clearly took their toll on Harrington as he suffered his first early departure from a tournament since The Players Championship in Florida in May.
"I was tired. I tried hard but I was struggling at times," Harrington admitted after a second round comprising four birdies, four bogeys and a double bogey.
"You've got to expect it even though I would have liked to have done better. A couple of things didn't quite go my way and that happens when you're not quite on top of your game.
"You get slightly out with your clubbing and there were a couple of bad three putts but at the end of the day I would definitely put it down to mental tardiness rather than anything else."
Returning to action following his US PGA Championship victory at Oakland Hills 11 days earlier, Harrington had opened with a one-over-par 72 on Thursday but was always up against it following a low-scoring morning led by defending champion Steve Stricker, whose 64 gave him a two-shot halfway lead over Hunter Mahan.
"You never like missing cuts, you don't want to do that," Harrington said. "But it is really a knock-on from the last couple of weeks and I think I'd rather take two wins and a missed cut."
The world number three can now at least recharge his batteries for a few days before returning to the fray at next week's Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston, which will run from Friday to Monday as Americans celebrate the Labor Day holiday weekend.
"There's no doubt that a couple of days' rest will do me more good than playing a couple more rounds here at the back of the field, that's for sure," Harrington said.
"And it's a long week next week so I'm sort of happy to have the break.
"Hopefully I'll come out stronger next week. There was always going to be a little bit of a fall-off when you do things like that but I struggled and so I was a little bit disappointed in the end.
"I'm going to take it easy in the next six days now, do some practice on my short game - the long game's very good, I'm very happy with that. So maybe do things nice and quietly over the next week, not overdo anything."