Someone asked Harrington, who made seven birdies on Thursday and is one shot off the lead, if he had ever played a tournament round without his left shoe. His answer provoked a gale of laughter in the media center.

“Both shoes have to be exactly the same, so you couldn't build a shoe on one side to give you an advantage on the golf course,” the Irishman said. “You could do it if you had a blister because you wouldn't be doing it to get your weight near that side.

“I would definitely think you couldn't take your shoe off with the sole purpose of …”

Harrington suddenly realized what he had said. He burst into laughter and high-fived European Tour media official Scott Crockett, who had earlier drawn groans from the media with a similar play on words.

“I couldn't put something under my right foot in order to get my weight in my left side,” Harrington said, choosing his words more carefully this time “That would be the same sort of thing, wouldn't it?”

* * *

Lee Westwood managed to beat Chris DiMarco 2 up on Sunday at the Ryder Cup despite fighting through a chest cold. He felt so bad that he was in bed by 8:45 that night, although a phone call summoned him back to the European celebration about an hour later.

“I was snoozing because I was feeling so dreadful,” Westwood recalled earlier this week. “I came downstairs, and I thought, I'll only have a couple of hot totties, and it ended up being about five, but that's all I had on Sunday night.

“It's the most sober I've ever been on Monday morning after Ryder Cup.”

Told that one of his teammates suggested he was a hypochondriac, Westwood, still sniffling on Wednesday, didn’t miss a beat.

“That would be the big fat Northern Irishman, wouldn't it?” he said, grinning. “With the highlights, covering up the grey?”

Westwood’s good friend Darren Clarke, indeed, was the culprit. The captain’s picks were dynamite in the Ryder Cup -- rewarding Ian Woosnam’s faith in them with two Four-ball wins and seven points overall.

“It was nice to take the pressure off Woosie and prove that he made two good picks,” Westwood said. “It's very difficult to say. If they would have picked somebody else, maybe they would have got five points, you never know.

“But I think seven points out of a possible eight from his two wildcards was a pretty good return on a gamble. I think most captains would take that.”

Westwood has now played five matches in each of the last two Ryder Cups – and he hasn’t lost. His overall record in five competitions is a stellar 15-8-1.

Westwood, who made four birdies on the back nine Thursday on the way to an even-par 71, said he ran into Thomas Bjorn earlier this week. The Dane had been vocal in his frustration over not being one of Woosnam’s picks, as well as in the way he found out, but Bjorn quickly apologized.

“Yeah, he gave me a nice hug on the range early on,” Westwood said. “He's probably got the flu now.”