The Players: Sometimes you've got to trust your gut. For the second day running, Padraig Harrington finished with a missed short putt to leave a sour taste.

It was a shame, as a costly series of errors on his final hole - three-putting from no more than five feet - came from playing mind games with himself, looking for breaks in the putts that didn't exist.

Unfortunately for him, it was the perfect example of how to turn a birdie into a bogey, and Harrington ended up signing for a second-round 70, for a midway total of 146, two-over.

It put him comfortably inside the cut, but with an enormous amount of work left to get among the contenders for the $1.6 million title.

"You know, I'm just disappointed to three-putt the last (the ninth). If I'd got back to level, you never know (what might happen)," he said.

Harrington is something of a pioneer on tour, being the first to use a new putter shaft designed by kinematics expert Dr Paul Hurrion which incorporates a "floating fulcrum" that is intended to "trick the human neuromuscular into putting with improved control of path and distance".

Theory is all very well, the tough part is implementing it, and Harrington managed two three-putts - in taking 30 putts - yesterday.

"I'm very, very happy with the putter. The weight inside the head helps you take the putter back a little more on the inside and the pendulum stays, it doesn't want to pull across the putt . . . I just need to get something to connect it to the brain!"

Indeed, Harrington blamed his poor focus for the late transgression with the putter.

"I need to work on my mental game. I didn't get the sort of run-in to this week that I had wanted with the weather disrupting what I wanted to do in practice. There were times I lost focus and you really have to be disciplined.

"When you lose focus, it shows in the way you can get distracted over a short putt. You know you shouldn't miss it, so you're saying 'don't miss it' and you're wondering 'is it going to break? Is it not going to break?' Instead of focusing on hitting a good putt, you're focusing on not hitting a bad putt, and these greens are very unforgiving for any bad putts."

Harrington had also missed a two-footer on Thursday evening to bogey the 18th, on the way to a 76.

But yesterday's three-putt bogey on the ninth came at the end of a much improved round of golf where he hit 14 of 18 greens in regulation.

"I was a lot better today," conceded Harrington. "You know, I didn't swing it very well last week (in the Wachovia Championship) and my preparation was poor for this week. Last week knocked me back a bit, and then not being really able to play a practice round the first three days this week meant I wasn't as sharp as I should have been. That certainly showed up in the first round. I struggled all day and made simple things complicated in the wind. This effort was a lot better."

Harrington started on the 10th and got out of the traps fast with birdies on the 11th and 12th and saw a 10-foot effort for birdie on the 15th shave the hole. But a pulled drive into the trees on the long 16th meant he had to lay up, and his third shot finished 30 feet from the flag. A poor first putt was compounded with a bad second, and he ended up with a three-putt bogey.

Still, he recovered well, chipping to 12 inches for a birdie on the second and then rolling in a 25-footer for birdie on the fifth, while keeping the momentum going with a fine par save on the sixth after driving into a fairway bunker and only managing to play out 50 yards short of the green, from where he got up and down.

Three-under for his round playing the ninth, he gave himself that five-foot birdie opportunity which he managed to turn into a bogey.