After a superb 4-under round that leaves him tied second in the Irish Open leaderboard, Padraig Harrington spoke to Nathan Murphy about his first 18 holes.
"I didn’t even know I was one shot off the lead. I don’t try and look at leaderboards. I just knew 4-under par is a nice solid score. You’re never going to be far away with that," he said.
"Assuming we get a little bit of wind, 4-under par is going to be well there and just keep trying to nudge a little bit forward each day. You certainly don’t expect to shoot 4-under every day. It's a good start to the week and it keeps the momentum going.
"I played well early on and missed a few chances. You don’t feel like you should be 1-over par and things are going away from you, so I took a chance and chipped it in which got me 1-under par. Being under par, you always feel you got something in the bank and something to work with, you feel like it’s an OK day.
"I hit some bad tee shots on my ninth and tenth tees, and on a links course sometimes you can get away with it, and I did get away with it. I would probably play two levels above myself on a links course."
After starting out the tournament with odds of 66-1, Harrington gave his verdict on the odds and what he thought they should be.
"If they factored that in at the bookies, it’s kind of saying that they reckoned I was playing really horrible. Maybe I should have been a 100-1 only it was a links course. I felt it was, for once, not often you get value on an Irish player in Ireland. 66-1 on a links course did seem a little long," he said.
