Players Championship: The pursuit of the ultimate prize can blind the most devout "range rat", as those golfers who spend hour upon hour on the practice ground are known, into losing perspective of the bigger picture.

Nobody works as hard on his game as Padraig Harrington, but nobody could ever accuse the Dubliner of living in such an ivory tower, insulated from life's realities. He has always kept his feet firmly on planet earth, a man of perspective.

Yesterday, on the eve of the Players Championship, Harrington opened up about the conflict of being here in Sawgrass - where he has finished runner-up in a tournament unofficially dubbed "the fifth major" for the past two years - at a time when his father, Paddy, is seriously ill. Without a doubt, he'd rather be home in Dublin, instead of being separated by the Atlantic.

"I didn't want to come at all . . . but, as I'm here, I'll be fully focused on the golf course. That's me, that's the way I play golf.

"I'm usually disciplined when I'm out there (on the course) and I will try to stay that way this week," said Harrington, who had considered not playing, only to be encouraged to do so by his father, adding: "It's no extra incentive (to win), my father's not like that. If I don't win, it won't be a burden."

Harrington has, nevertheless, altered his schedule and pulled out of next week's BellSouth Classic in Atlanta to return home.

"Unfortunately, there is a chance I could miss the Masters (the following week). I don't plan to at the moment, but I'll go home next week and take it from there," said Harrington, the top European in the world rankings at number six who comes into the Players on the back of winning his first US Tour event, the Honda Classic, a fortnight ago.

Indeed, despite the understandable personal upset caused by his father's situation, Harrington also demonstrated that he retained some sense of humour.

Upon informing curious American journalists of his father's own sporting prowess and that he had played Gaelic football for Cork in two All-Ireland finals (1956 and 1957) but lost in both, and then realising the analogy with his own image of a bridesmaid, he added, "It must be a family trait. But you know what? He has no regrets, none at all."

Harrington acknowledged the influence his father has been on his career, going back to when he first took up the sport. "I've had the best possible background for playing all sports. I had tremendous self-belief from a young age in everything I did, a lot of confidence in all the sports I played. I couldn't have got more encouragement from my dad without him ever in any sense pushing me or wanting to live his life through my sports.

"When I was growing up my dad was a very competitive, very intelligent player and he just taught me the idea of getting the ball into the hole, the art of scoring . . . he'd have encouraged me how to score well and, at the end of the day, that's really where my talents lie. It's in my thinking around the golf course and getting the ball into the hole."

If ever a course has a feelgood factor for Harrington, the TPC at Sawgrass is it. "I don't know what it is about this course that suits me, I really don't. I like the course, that's for sure, but there's nothing I'd say that particularly suits me. I can't put my finger on it.

"As regards expectations for this event, it is the fifth biggest event in the world and doesn't quite carry the same burden of the four majors. It's a very special event, a very big event."

In last year's final round, he almost reeled in eventual winner Adam Scott by coming home in 30 strokes, finishing with six successive threes - par-birdie-birdie-eagle-par-birdie - to finish second in consecutive years, within agonising distance of one of the game's biggest prizes.

Of that incredible finish of a year ago, Harrington remarked: "Six threes in a row? There's not a sense of disbelief that you can do it, but you just wouldn't want to be waiting around to do it again. You don't know when you're going to do it again.

"The main thing for me this week is not to expect that I'm going to do something but just to stay in there and keep playing my game and, if it happens, it happens."

Harrington is one of three Irish players in the field, along with Darren Clarke and Graeme McDowell. But the strength of the field is such that the world's top 50 players are participating in a tournament with a purse of €6 million (the biggest in golf) and a winner's cheque of €1.1 million.

Strangely enough, it has proven to be an elusive title for the world's best. Of the so-called "Big Five" - Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Retief Goosen - only Woods has made the breakthrough win in the Players.

Yet Harrington, for one, was content to have the quintet take favouritism. "There is a step up to those guys, they're definitely in a league of their own at the moment. It's a leap of faith to get there. But three years ago, Vijay was behind me in the rankings, so things can change."