Q. Did the mud bother you today, the mud on your ball?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: You know, you don't get -- you usually don't get a huge amount of mud on the ball because it's this rained, because the surface water cleans it as it skids on top of it. I only had mud on at 14 and I hit it to four feet. It was still wet with mud on the ball, so I'm sure it came off, straight off when I hit it, and it did.
Yeah, I made three bad decisions today, I've got to say. I chipped on the back of 4 when I should have putted through the fringe because I just needed to get it on the green and I chipped it by 10 feet. Hit a good chip, but it was the wrong shot.
Then I got to 13 and I'm thinking, should I chip it or putt it and I was half in my mind and I putted it. The fringe, because they are wet now, have changed totally from what they were like on Monday, Tuesday when they were dry. You could putt through them quite easy. I hit the putt on 13 exactly the way I wanted it, but I hit it because I reckoned it would be soft; I should have chipped it.
17, I hit it up the left side and I have a clear shot to the pin, ball slightly above my feet and nice tight lie on the edge of where the spectators have walked. So I have an option to drop it because there's casual water there. But I liked the lie and I hit the shot and I came up a yard short but, in fact, I was basically, five, six yards right. Thinking about it afterwards it would have been a better angle, if I moved out more I could have gone at the left of pin, instead of trying to draw it into a tight pin, I could have drawn it on the left with a fade, which would have made more sense, but not as good of a lie.
Q. What did you hit there?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I hit 6-iron.
Q. How far did you go past the pin after that third shot on 13? Did it go all the way back?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Oh, yeah, it was 50 feet, 60 feet.
Q. And when you were, eight feet, ten feet?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: I must have been five yards to the back of the green and I was four yards over it. So I was 27 feet or something like that, 30 feet away and I putted up the bank.
You know it wasn't a great putt. It was almost going by, I'm surprised it -- once it's down the tier, it's 60 feet. And I hit a lovely putt about 3 1/2 feet. It was swinging left-to-right as it went by the hole, and I hit my next putt, it moved out the other way. I actually hit four good putts and I hit a good putt back, a 3-footer, I was enjoying that.
Q. When you look at the leaderboard and you see so many players from around the world, only a few Americans up there, are you surprised by that?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: No. I think the game is becoming very, very strong throughout the world. You only have to go down, the European Tour goes down to South Africa and to Australia to play events, and the standard is so good there. The players play so well in Australia, play so well in South Africa, it's only a matter of time before they bring their games from their home countries out. There's some great players there you have never heard of, so you can only expect that the players will come from all around the world.
LARRY PUGH: Thank you very much, and good luck on the remainder of your weekend.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Thank you.
End of FastScripts....
