Harrington aims to win on merit

For a man who once thought he would settle for finishing, say, 75th on the European tour, Padraig Harrington is doing rather nicely, thank you. The 32-year-old Dubliner starts the Volvo Masters Andalucia here today with a fine chance of finishing 74 places better than that and winning the 2002 Order of Merit.

When Harrington turned professional, despite an amateur career that featured three Walker Cups, he suffered from a chronic lack of confidence. "When I started," he said yesterday, "I definitely didn't think I could win an order of merit. But then I didn't think I could win a tournament, either. In fact it only occurred to me that I could win a tournament when I actually won one. Back then I suspected I might be chugging along in the lower reaches of the tour, just making a living."

But a work ethic possessed by few has seen Harrington develop into a world-class golfer. This is a man who books lessons with his coach, Bob Torrance, not by the hour but by the week and though he may not be the best ball striker on the tour, anything that can be improved by dedication has been.

The rewards have been huge. This season alone Harrington has won $2,355,136 (£1.5m), 13th on the world money list and the highest of anyone not playing on the US Tour. He is also eighth in the world rankings.

And so he heads into this season-ending event only £14,538 behind Retief Goosen. Harrington is the defending champion, Goosen the holder of the order of merit and given the huge amount of prize money on offer - £2m in total, with £333,340 for first - a one-shot difference between the two could easily settle matters.

Should Harrington win the order without winning this tournament he will become the first man since Sandy Lyle in 1980 to become European No1 after winning only one event in the season. "I would have thought," said Harrington, "that I would have needed to win more. Colin Montgomerie usually won three or four and Lee Westwood won six the year he did it."

The Irishman certainly had his chances for more titles, playing pass the parcel, for instance, with the European Open trophy, before it fell into the lap of Michael Campbell. And a par instead of a bogey at the 72nd hole at Muirfield would have given him a chance of the biggest prize of all, getting him into the play-off for the Open Championship.

But it is Harrington's commendable consistency that has got him in to his present enviable position. So far he has played 21 events in Europe and has no fewer than 17 top-20 finishes, 10 of them in the top nine. He will almost certainly need another one of those to become the 13th man to win the order of merit since it came into being in 1972.

·Sergio Garcia says he has played too much on both sides of the Atlantic this year and is not planning to extend his schedule in Europe for 2003. The Spaniard expects to compete next year in the minimum 11 European Tour events required for him to retain his tour card while maintaining his commitments on the US Tour.