Q. 16-under and a one-shot lead heading into tomorrow's final round. How are you feeling about things?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Well, yeah, I let a few, I certainly could have got a low one in there today and got away from the field. Golf's like that though, it's hard to, when you're leading, I don't know, the putts just didn't drop there for awhile. Probably have had the silliest, maybe the most silliest, I come up with the silliest excuse ever for making -- I'm glad I broke my par streak. It's not good not to have made a bogey. That's not a good thing. I know that sounds strange, so that's the first thing I'll say.
16 came out of nowhere, which is, I have a -- so, essentially, I went in the toilet. The door was locked. Took me a minutes to realize there wasn't somebody in there, another few, another while to get the door open. I had, as we are on the Champions Tour, I had the longest pee ever. And then I kind of rushed down the fairway and hit my shot. The second shot was kind of innocuous because the pin was so tight I was just playing 15 feet left of it and to be honest, yeah, I just, I wasn't -- I do that sometimes, I just wasn't focused, I wasn't into it and I hit a bad shot in the hazard. Disappointed I overplayed -- you know, I was trying to get a that up-and-down, so I'm disappointed that my first lie I went under it. The second one was a bad lie so I blast that out. But, yeah, so when you get over 50 it sometimes takes a long time to have a pee. And that was, yeah, that's my excuse. That's got to be original, I would assume.
Q. What were you hitting in there?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Sand wedge. 52 degree. Same club I actually had to hit the next hole that hit the pin. So and I would have -- the next hole I was being far more aggressive on the next hole going at the pin. Whereas, on 16 because it was so tight I was playing safe and sometimes when you play safe you take your eye off the ball.
Q. Sometimes when you have a strange finish like that, at the end of the day and you put your feet up, how do you take all the good of today and accentuate that?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: You just go, it's golf. Yeah. God, I would love to play golf like that every day of my life. As I said, first day I shot 64 easy. Second day I got everything out of it to shoot 68. Today I left a lot out on the golf course and shoot 68. Golf's a crazy game. It's just like that. Some days you get a, you know, you hit a bad shot and you get a break and you make birdies. Other days you play nice and solid and steady and then it just kind of gets in on you. Yeah, I would be thrilled if I turn up tomorrow and play like I played today.
Q. How, what does the birdie on 18 do for you mentally? Obviously gives you the outright lead.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, I think you're right, it's always nice to finish with a birdie. It's an awkward tee shot when it's a little bit off left and down. I kind of hit a pull cut so there's no room up left and there's no room up the right. So it's a tough shot. But, yeah, I've played my second shot for the bunker and was happy to be in there. I practiced that shot. I was pretty confident that I could get it up-and-down. But it's always nice to birdie the last. It's always nice to hole a putt on the last. Yeah. So you're dead right, it creates a bit of momentum, for sure.
Q. Did you slip a little bit on that tee shot on 18? Looked on the broadcast like you did.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: No. No, that's just my foot action.
Q. Can you give us your vantage point, your play by play on Stewart's hole-in-one?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, you know, I stood up there first. I think this is -- I'm sure Stewart is going to tell you this, so I should really leave the story for him. I teed it up with a slight bit of right to left slope, so that I can kind of pull draw it into the middle of the green and I pulled drew it up the middle with a draw obviously to 10 feet and it looked pretty good. Not sure what Kitsu did, but he hit it even tighter than me. Pitched inside me. So that was two exceptionally aggressive shots and we intimidated the 6'-5" tall Stewart Cink into going for the pin. And he hit a beauty too. Again, I think like I said with Rocco the first day, I played a lot with Stewart over the years. A lot of my, actually a lot of my good tournaments have been played with Stewart. So he's an easy guy to play with. We were having quite an enjoyable round. I think the last three holes we ended up, I ended up grinding a bit too much. But the rest of it was a very pleasant day.
Q. Well you're far from a short guy, but you kind of had to do a little jump to high five him.
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Oh, yeah, no, I did that on purpose. Clearly. Clearly I'm 6'-1". But the wing span on Stewart is pretty high. I didn't want to be left hanging. Those high fives for professional golfers can be, yeah, a bit cringy, aren't they. I like the way you did say I did a big jump. Or did you say a little jump? In my head I actually was floating for a few seconds. I was floating. I was just hanging there for awhile.
Q. You got a nice major last year, considering the shape of your game this week and your position, what's your excitement level for tomorrow?
PADRAIG HARRINGTON: Yeah, look, I love playing competitive golf where you're trying to win. I know it's a major tomorrow and you want to go out there and win majors more than the next event. But in the end of the day we all play for that buzz coming down Sunday evening in with a chance at winning, trying to manage our game, our thoughts. And it is really our thoughts, what we're thinking, good, bad, indifferent. And that's why we do it. We put ourselves out there and you would love in a perfect world that there was no drama in it, but the likelihood is at some stage tomorrow it will be a bit of drama and we'll have to figure it out.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports