Further woe for Harrington as he misses cut in French Open

Published on Friday 3 July 2009 23:12

PADRAIG Harrington's nightmare run of missed cuts went to five in Paris yesterday – just as many as Tiger Woods has failed to make in his entire 13-year professional career.

With his Open hat-trick bid less than two weeks away, Harrington's fate was effectively sealed when he drove out of bounds and ran up a triple-bogey eight at the 14th hole of his second round in the French Open Alstom at Le Golf National.

The Dubliner, who finished with a 75 for five-over par, freely conceded on Wednesday that he was running out of time to get his game in good enough shape to triumph again at Turnberry. Now he has only next week's Irish PGA championship to find a bit of competitive confidence before heading to Scotland.

Harrington, who last played four rounds of an event at the Players Championship in Florida in early May, left a tournament which at the halfway stage sees Argentina's Rafa Echenique – last week's albatross man in Munich – take over at the top from German Martin Kaymer with a score of ten under.

It was more his putting than his eight which troubled the three-time major winner. "I was never comfortable on the greens all week," said Harrington, who felt his three-putt bogey at the 13th to drop to two over was the crucial mistake.

Echenique added a 67 to his opening 65 to reach ten under. Kaymer, having matched the course record with his opening 62, took ten shots more and from three clear dropped two strokes behind in joint second place.

Alongside him are England's Steve Webster and South African Charl Schwartzel. Last year's runner-up, Colin Montgomerie – without a top-ten finish since then – triple-bogeyed the final hole and only just survived the cut. Three other Scots made the cut on the same mark as Monty with Gary Orr's 70, Steven O'Hara's 72 and David Drysdale's round of 76 good enough for a total of one over.

Finishing just two shots ahead of them were Paul Lawrie, who after an opening round of 67 returned a 74 yesterday, and Alastair Forsyth who shot 69.

&#149 Tournament host Tiger Woods took charge at the AT&T National at Congressional Country Club but a back-nine collapse put paid to Paul Casey's hopes of competing over the weekend.

Woods followed Thursday's six-under-par 64, his lowest opening round in two years, with a 66 in Bethesda, Maryland. The five-birdie, one-bogey round took the world No 1 into an early second-round lead at ten-under par and he held on to it after overnight leader Anthony Kim failed to build on his course record, eight-under 62 in the first round with a 70 to finish two strokes behind Woods in third place, one behind Australia's Rod Pampling, who posted a 64 to move nine under.

Scotland's Martin Laird was heading for his first taste of third-round action since May at the Byron Nelson Championship after a 71 left the US-based Glaswegian at one over par. Laird led the tournament in driving accuracy, finding Congressional's fairways 96.43 per cent of the time over the opening two days.