NOBODY NEEDS to tell Paul McGinley the adage of the old dog for the hard road. He's been in this game long enough to know that you earn whatever favours come your way; and, generally, they're of your making.
So, there was no way the Dubliner - on the fringes of contention here - was letting his mind race ahead, either in contemplating what the weekend holds in the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational here at the Firestone Country Club in Akron or, for that matter, in catching the attention of Nick Faldo, who has in his hands two precious wild card picks for September's Ryder Cup in Valhalla.
Yesterday, out bright and early, McGinley added a 67 to his opening 70 to reach the half-way point of this €5 million tournament ideally positioned to challenge at the business end over the weekend.
But, then, he doesn't have to cast his mind back too far to know you don't always get what you want - or expect. In the BMW PGA at Wentworth in May, he held a four-stroke halfway lead, only to suffer a Saturday meltdown that eventually saw him slide to a tied-10th finish.
If that experience toughened him, the reality - and no one knows it better than McGinley - is that the consistency which has seen him record no fewer than five top-10s this season and has him ranked third in strokeplay scoring average (behind only Robert Karlsson and Graeme McDowell) and eighth in driving accuracy on the European Tour counts for nothing if you don't get the ball in the hole when it matters.
If Paul McGinley could hole putts, he'd be a world beater. He's 120th in putts per greens-in-regulation and 97th in putts per round.
But, having taken to working with Paul Hurrion, there have been signs over the first two rounds here the ball is more likely to do his bidding. A classic case in point came at the eighth yesterday, where he rolled in a 40-footer for one of five birdies he conjured in a round that contained a lot of quality.
McGinley started superbly, and nobody would have been surprised if he'd opened up with five straight birdies such was the quality of his early play. As it happened, he had to be content with just two - putting his wedge approach to three feet on the first and then pitching to six feet on the par five second - as birdie chances failed to drop on the third, fourth and fifth.
On the sixth, an errant drive to the right resulted in a bogey, but he righted matters with that 40-footer for birdie on the eighth and then sank another birdie putt, this time from 20 feet, on the short 12th and rolled in an 18-footer on the 15th, where he played a lovely five-iron approach in a left-to-right wind.
His second bogey came on the 16th, where he was in trouble with his lay-up on the par five, and he ensured he would sign for a 67 - for 137, three under - with a fine par save on the last, getting up and down from greenside rough after getting into trouble off the tee and being forced to hook a nine-iron approach around trees.
McGinley did many good things yesterday, a reminder perhaps to Faldo of what he can do. McGinley, for one, hasn't ruled out the prospect of a captain's call-up.
"Any kind of form over the next four weeks would put me in contention . . . but it is a long shot," he conceded, adding: "We'll see. I haven't played well enough to be in the team at the moment. But a month of form and you never know what might happen.
Part of McGinley's problem is that his consistency - including five top-10s this season - has not resulted in a win. "This is the first WGC event I've played since the Ryder Cup points started and you're very much behind the eight ball if you don't get to play in those. I've just got to play better, that's the bottom line, because 120th (in the world) is no man's land."
McGinley hasn't played in any of the majors this season and won't be in next week's US PGA at Oakland Hills in Detroit. This is his major. And, as he conceded yesterday, "anyone who shows form over the next four weeks will look to get a pick. If I keep pushing up those world rankings, the rest will happen and maybe a pick in the Ryder Cup might happen."
