Gadget mad Harrington

By Brian Keogh

Padraig Harrington is fast becoming golf's inspector gadget.

The Dubliner has dozens of devices in his basement that help him get an edge on the field.

And he was at it again on the putting green at the K Club yesterday, using a laser-guide to line up his putts.

Caddie Ronan Flood quipped: "It's the Austin Powers approach!"

The world No 10 won the Irish Open using the revolutionary Torpedo putter.

But has since changed back to his trusty Odyssey Two-Ball, which he hopes to wield like a magic wand this week.

Despite some erratic putting performances over the past year, Harrington said: "I’m putting well. Some week’s its fine and some weeks it isn’t. I have to be patient.

"What always gives me the pleasure, I’ve been holing putts when I need to. At the Irish Open I holed a lot of difficult putts in the heat of the battle.

"I always seem to have been able to make them when I need to and that’s good."

Harrington is 33rd in the European Tour putting stats this season and reckons his problems stem from laser eye surgery he had last year.

He said: "If there’s any difference in my putting from years ago, I read the greens differently than I used to and I wouldn’t have as much confidence in my reading of the greens.

"I changed my eyesight with laser surgery. I used be right to left bias and now I’m left to right bias. It reversed it.

"I tend to putt better on tricky greens like Oakmont where there is no real reading of the greens, it is by feel. Some weeks I go out and I’m okay. It depends on the colour of the greens.

"There’s a lot of different things. I would say half my tournaments I’d say I don’t read the greens at all correctly."