“Results went against me, definitely, no question about that,” Harrington said with candor. “It's nice when results go against you, and I didn't cost the team anything. That's a big plus. If we had lost narrowly, I'd be devastated.

“I said to somebody there in an interview, what you've got to do at the Ryder Cup is have 12 guys turn up and play average, play their game, play average. I succeeded in doing that last week. Thankfully the other 11 guys played better than average.

“Very few people are going to - as we see in any tournament week -- to hit top form, absolute top form in a given week. So the key with something like the Ryder Cup is to make sure that nobody is struggling too much.

“I was right in the middle last week; it just wasn't good enough in the matches that I played.”

Harrington came into the Ryder Cup, though, on the heels of a tie for second at the BMW International Open and joint fourth at the Madrid Open. He didn’t putt particularly well at the Ryder Cup, but certainly found his range at The Grove on Thursday.

A 6-footer at the first hole and another from 8 at No. 2 got Harrington’s adrenaline going. He went on to turn in 30 after three birdies in a four-hole stretch that began on the fourth hole on putts of 40, 6 and 5 feet.

Harrington closed out a solid day with birdies on both par 5s on the back nine. He hit two drivers to the 559-yard 15th and two-putted from 40 feet. He was 60 yards short of the green at the 18th after driving into the rough, but successfully negotiated a 15-footer for his seventh birdie of the day.

“Greens are excellent here,” said Harrington, who missed two 6-footers or he would have gone even lower. “You want to be holing putts on these greens. They really are superb. I think that's why you see a lot of good scoring.

“The golf course is quite tight. Especially if you hit it in the rough you're in trouble. But when you have greens of this quality, guys are going to make birdies and hole putts.”

And now that he has, Harrington has a chance at the biggest win of his career.