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3 IRISH OPEN

July 29, 2010

Padraig Harrington

KILLARNEY, IRELAND

Q. Satisfied?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, I'm happy enough. I made a couple of birdies coming home which was important. Yeah, overall I'm reasonably satisfied. It was a little bit tentative early on. I was happy enough with how I played towards the end, so that was good.
Bogey-free, definitely made a few nice up-and-downs at times out there. That's always important to keep a round going. This is the type of golf course that there are some birdies to be made but if you're making bogeys, you feel like you've gone back a lot.

Q. How have you found the place?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: Very good. The greens are soft out there so the course is playing about as easy as it's going to play, no wind. So you can imagine if they firmed up the greens and we had a bit of wind, we would struggle to shoot par out there maybe.
It's a fair test and a good test.

Q. Conditions this week are perfect for golf but what was the atmosphere like out there? You had a good threeball?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: It was a good atmosphere. There was a good crowd out there. Very busy all day. It was nice to be out there in front of the home crowd.

Q. How are you feeling about an opening round of 68?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, I'm reasonably pleased. I felt I could have made a few more birdies but I definitely got up-and-down a few times for par which was very important. If you make a bogey on this course, you feel like you're dropping back a bit.
Obviously this is a substantial golf course. You can see how soft the greens are and how little wind there was with the scoring. If we get a bit of wind up the next three days or if the greens firm up, it will be a lot tougher challenge.

Q. Obviously a lot of guys seeing the course for the first time; have you known it much from the past?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: Never played it before this week. They have hosted a number of amateur events over the years but for whatever reason, I seemed to miss out.

Q. You haven't won in a while and people are talking about this, but you are not concerned about your form, you were saying yesterday with your Top-10s you are doing better than ever. Tell us about that.
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: I am concerned about the form. I would like to win. Winning is very important. But you know, in defence, and the fact that I'm defending at the end of the day is not a good sign.
But you know, I've had 14 Top-10s in the last year which is probably better than I've ever had in my career. There's plenty of good form in there. I'm just not getting across the line. I would like to get across the line and it's important to do that, but this game of golf, it kind of goes like that.
Sometimes you find it very hard to win and then all of a sudden the floodgates open and somebody throws you a tournament or something like that and it's easy to win. You just have to stay patient.
Definitely I can feel it out there in myself, I'm trying a little too hard and I'm not relaxing enough and I'm not care free enough, all of these clichÃ©s, whatever you want to use. I just need to let it happen a bit.

Q. Overall, how are you feeling about your game?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: I've never been happier with my game actually. Swinging it -- happier than ever with that end of things. Which leaves me time to focus on the important things of my short game and that and my short game was weak at The Open and it's been strong today. I'll just keep going forward with that.

Q. I know how keen you are to make The Ryder Cup side, as always. At the moment you are outside the automatics, what's your thoughts on where you're at?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, it certainly comes up a lot. It's a tough team to make; at the end of the day, you have to win some big points to get into that World Ranking category. Well, as I said, it had lots of nice finishes, none of them have really created much of a jump for me. You need to be winning 30 points or 40 points once or twice in a season rather than lots of eights and tens and things like that.
It's been tough work but I've got this tournament and the next two, and hopefully I'll do something substantial that I can jump right back up in there.

Q. In that world point list has been difficult this side this time around, it's regrettable you have not been able to play more in Europe. One or two people are people saying, couldn't you sneak one or two more in; what's the story with your schedule?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: In hindsight, yeah, I'd like to have, but unfortunately, and really for me, I have to take it very -- I have to take the attitude I'm going to play well, and you know, play a schedule that I'm turning up the form, rather than a schedule that I'm turning up hoping that things work out. I set my schedule at the start of the year like I'm going to go out there and be winning tournaments and winning majors, and that means you can't over play.
Looking back in hindsight, yeah, maybe I should have played a few more in Europe and got a few more in the points because I'm not too far away on the Money List. Maybe that's where I should have focussed. But when you set your schedule at the start of the year, you've got to set it, at least, with the belief that you are going to perform, and this wouldn't be an issue at this time of the year.

Q. I've heard it said that you won't go to Gleneagles to play, you have a FedExCup tournament to play in America; would that change in any circumstance?
PÃDRAIG HARRINGTON: You know, to be honest, one of the things I've actually arranged, a Special Olympics clinic for the week of The Barclays classic in the States. So things like that are starting to build up and sort of -- you know, I'm starting to considering changing my mind, but you don't want to let people down, either.

End of FastScripts

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