Irish Golf Desk

View Original

Tiger tuned up for Turnberry tryst

Padraig Harrington and Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods has set his sights on Padraig Harrington's Open crown and his 15th major win.

The world No 1 cruised impressively to his 68th PGA Tour triumph at Congressional on Sunday as pal Roger Federer claimed his 15th Grand Slam title at Wimbledon.

Harrington and Woods want Turnberry title.Now Woods wants to get even with the Swiss tennis genius by denying Harrington a hat-trick of Open wins at Turnberry next week.

Set to hone his game with coach Hank Haney this week, Woods said: "Hopefully I can play like I did this week and continue to build next week. Hank is coming down, hopefully we'll do some good work and continue to build on what we're doing right now.

"You're just making sure that you can flight your ball and making sure you can manoeuvre it both ways efficiently because over there you don't know what kind of weather you're going to get.

"You're going to get years like we had at St. Andrews where it's perfect, or you can get like a Muirfield day or what they had last year at Birkdale.

"You just don't know, and you have to be able to be confident in controlling your golf ball and maneouvering it all around and feel like you can do it efficiently."

While Tiger's confidence is soaring, Harrington's has been dented by five missed cuts on the trot. But the Dubliner hopes he can turn things around when he tees it up in the Ladbrokes.com Irish PGA at the European Club on Wednesday.

Down one spot to 12th in the latest world rankings, he’s hoping history will repeat itself after taking back-to-back Opens just a week after winning the Irish PGA.

Gunning for his sixth Irish title, Harrington said: "That’s why I play there – that’s why the Irish PGA is on a links course the week before the Open, half an hour away from me. I am looking forward to getting out there and playing."