Padraig Harrington's blog: Chevron World Challenge review

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I am back home after the Chevron World Challenge and a couple of days at the Titleist Performance institute.

I came over to California looking for a win to finish off my season but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.  I finished in a tie for third place with Lee Westwood, which in the end was a very good result as I was looking like struggling for a top ten finish at one stage.  This has been a good event for me over the years and even though I didn’t win, it was still a good way to finish off my year.  I picked up some good world ranking points to close out my season; seeing as I am taking eight weeks off it is nice to have picked up a few!

For the first two rounds I played very nicely, but I never really converted the chances that I gave myself. I shot rounds of three under and four under but I should have been at least five shots better.  In my third round I didn’t feel that I played as well, but I still managed to shoot two under par to leave me in third place going into the final round.

I gave myself the chance to win the tournament but unfortunately I left a lot of shots behind me in the first three rounds.  The way I played in those rounds I should have put a bit of daylight between me and the field.  I had a number of three putts along with a number of short ones missed for birdies.  It certainly wasn’t a typical week for me on the greens.  At the start of the week I was hoping to get myself into contention for the final round so as to give myself a chance to win the tournament; I did this but I just didn’t play well enough in the final round to win.

My final round was a strange round of golf.  If someone had told me before I went out that I would hole out three times from off the green and drive the ball great then I would have assumed that I would win the tournament.  In fact I drove the ball probably as well as I have ever done in a final round; I hit it long and straight but I hit my irons very poorly.  I was in great positions coming into the greens but I just wasn’t able to hit a decent iron shot.  It was very strange; particularly for me as it is more likely to be the other way around. However, as bad as I hit my irons I did manage to save myself a few times by chipping in; I holed a bunker shot for an eagle on the second, a chip shot on the fifth for par and then another chip shot on the sixteenth for another eagle.  I still find it hard to believe that I didn’t have a chance to win coming down the last few holes considering I made two eagles!

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