Harrington gets game in gear, surges to lead at Bridgestone

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This article was published 07/08/2009 (6238 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AKRON, Ohio — Padraig Harrington feels good enough about his swing to concentrate on his results, and it finally paid off Thursday in the Bridgestone Invitational with a 6-under 64 for a two-shot lead.

Harrington has not won a sanctioned tournament since last year at the PGA Championship, when he became the first European in history to win successive majors in the same season.

The Irishman was about the only one not terribly excited.

“There’s no relevance at all,” he said. “It’s just a round of golf.”

It was a good one, though, and it gave him a two-shot lead over Scott Verplank, Tim Clark and Prayad Marksaeng of Thailand.

Tiger Woods kept alive his streak of breaking par in the opening round for the 11th straight time at Firestone, where he is going for his seventh victory on the tree-lined course. He didn’t do anything special in his round of 68, although it kept him in the picture.

Phil Mickelson got off to a rough start in his return to the PGA Tour. He played bogey-free on his back nine and picked up three birdies to salvage a round of even-par 70.

Mike Weir of Bright’s Grove, Ont., the lone Canadian in the field, opened with a 71.

Harrington spent most of the year working tirelessly on his swing, always looking to improve, never overly concerned when it didn’t come together as quickly as he might have wanted. He missed five straight cuts at one point, and hasn’t finished in the top 10 since he opened his season at the Abu Dhabi Championship.

On a soft and serene afternoon — and a week before his title defence in the final major of the year — this was a good step.

Harrington said that’s all it was.

“It doesn’t change the last six months, it won’t change the next six months,” Harrington said. “It’s only a game of golf, one particular round. I wouldn’t put too much significance into it because what if I went out there and shot 76? Would I let it affect tomorrow? I think I would not put much emphasis on the fact that I shot 64. I’m comfortable with it.”

For all his birdies, it was a par that got him going.

Harrington watched a marginal shot take a wicked bounce to the left of the 13th green, his fourth hole of the round, leaving him a tough chip with not much green between him and the flag. He hit it to five feet and made the putt.

Those were the pars he wasn’t saving all year, and it seemed to free him up for the rest of the day. He surged into a share of the lead with a 12-foot birdie on No. 1 and a two-putt birdie on the par-5 second, then picked up bonus birdies from about 25 feet on the seventh and eighth holes, the latter from just short of the green.

— The Associated Press