Harrington bust in Vegas — misses secondary cut
Pádraig Harrington will almost certainly accentuate the positives and head to next week's McGladrey Classic in optimistic mood despite missing the secondary cut in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas.
While he finished with three birdies in his last five on Friday to make the weekend, a late bogey at TPC Summerlin saw him post one over 72 on Saturday, meaning he'd missed the three round cut after more than 78 players qualified for the weekend.
Harrington finished a shot outside the top 70 on two under par and while he will be disappointed with his result, he can look back on a raft of putts holed over the last three days rather than reflect on a brace of short misses.
Unfortunately, he made far too many mistakes and a haul of seven bogeys and a double bogey six was too many compared to his tally of 11 birdies.
He will also have seen up close what he needs to be doing to compete having played the first two rounds with Brooks Koepka (69-68) and Erik Compton (69-70) and yesterday's third round with US Ryder Cup star Jimmy Walker, who outscored him by 10 strokes with an immaculate 62 catapulting him to tied third on 13 under par.
Harrington's tournament hopes suffered a blow on his front nine, the back at TPC Summerlin, where he finished bogey-double to go out in two over 37.
He hit his approach into water after a poor drive at the 12th but birdied the 13th and 14th from 15 feet and the 16th from just inside five feet to get to five under for the tournament.
Then disaster struck.
He came up just short and bogeyed the par-three 17th and then double bogeyed the 18th after what appeared to be a pulled drive out of bounds.
He did well to notch a two-putt par the fourth from 60 feet, holing a 14 footer to avoid a three-putt, and then looked to have banished all thoughts of missing the cut when he hit a 148 yard approach to five feet at the sixth and rolled in the birdie putt.
The 239-yard eighth proved to be his undoing, however, as he came up short in the right rough with his tee shot and missed from 12 feet for par.
Needing to birdie the par-five ninth to make the final round, he drove into the left rough and moved his second no more than 50 yards.
He played a brilliant third from over 210 yards to 22 feet but the putt failed to drop. While his scrambling was below average, he at least managed to finish the strokes gained putting in the black though he lost 3.8 shots per round to the field from tee to green.
At the top of the leaderboard, Ben Martin birdied five holes in a row on the back nine for a nine under 62 for a two-stroke lead on 17 under from Scotland's Russell Knox (66) and Andrew Putnam (66).
