Padraig Harrington leads the field at The Barclays
Everybody had set their eyes on the duel between Tiger Woods and Rory Mcllroy but the Irishman, Padraig Harrington stole the show with his marvellous seven-under par after the first round.
Harrington currently leads the tournament by a stroke. Behind him is the duo of Nick Watney and Brian Harman, both of them shot six-under par.
Harrington will be looking to impress the European Ryder Cup Captain, Jose Maria Olazabal because Harrington is currently not in the automatic qualification list. He needs to impress Olazabal big time in order to make it to the Ryder Cup.
Olazabal will be announcing his team on Monday and he has said that Harrington will have to at least win if he wants to be part of the European Ryder Cup team.
"I am not really going to get into and discuss because I am either going to do one of two things: I am either going to look like I am pleading or I am going to look like I am incriminating myself, one or the other," Harrington said.
"As I keep saying to people, you over here have this thing called the Fifth [Amendment]. I am going to plead the Fifth. I am not going to build myself up or I am not going to tear myself down. At the end of the day, it is up to him".
Padraig teed off from the first hole and on the par three third, he bogeyed after hitting his shot straight in the bunker. That proved to be his only mistake on Thursday. He made up for that error right at the next hole, when he sank a twenty five foot putter.
The Irishman raised his game up on the last eleven holes, excellent approaches to the pin meant that he birdied four consecutive times to finish the first round well ahead of the FedEx Cup leader, Tiger Woods.
Tiger Woods and Rory Mcllroy were being tipped for the victory. However, both of them could not make significant progress on the first day. They, nevertheless, had good rounds, with Tiger Woods edging ahead of the current PGA Champion by a stroke.
Tiger shot 3-under whereas, Rory shot 2-under, both of them approached the golf course with different plans.
Tags: