Montgomerie blames Woods for tee trouble

Tiger Woods may have been fishing in Alaska yesterday, but it seemed as if he was dropping his line somewhere in the waterways here at Fota Island. The name was floating everywhere.

Padraig Harrington, the leading home challenger, talked about him, as did the Irish Open favourite, Colin Montgomerie, who admitted the Woods factor had contributed to the decline in his work off the tee.

"I have been missing too many fairways for me and that is what is causing pressure on my putting," Monty said. "I am chipping to four, six and eight feet and they don't all go in. It all boils down to the first shot and the first ball has never really been my problem. Everyone is hitting the ball a lot harder than they used to, there is a Tiger Woods influence on us. The word length has come into the equation a lot more. Then there is my new ball which goes further than the old one and maybe the temptation is to hit it harder to see how far it will go. But I was plenty long enough before and I'm going back to that."

Harrington's last round was in the US Open at Southern Hills, where he played with an unpredicted also-ran in Woods. But then there are memories round these parts that no reputation is unsinkable. The neighbouring Great Island is dominated by the town of Cobh – pronounced Cove – from where around 3.7m Irish emigrants are thought to have left for the New World. It was also the last stopping-off point for the glittering palace of a liner which met an icy end near Newfoundland.

Woods too has proved to be destructible, though Harrington was able to take something away from their round. "The biggest thing I noticed was his focus, which is unbelievable," the Irishman said. "How he seems to build it up for each shot. When he goes to hit it, he is really clued in and focused on his target. Maybe he gets better practice at that because there are more distractions around him all the time.

"Everyone looks at his driving and putting, but his concentration is his best trait without a doubt. Some day hopefully I will be playing with Tiger when it is a lot more important."

But whether Harrington plays at all today is still open to doubt. An injury to his left hand, the legacy of damage sustained 12 years ago at Croke Park when he sprained his wrist in his last ever game of Gaelic football, has flared up. Harrington says there is a 95 per cent chance he will play and try to reverse a trend which stretches back almost two decades.

The last Irish winner of what is billboarded here as the nation's biggest international sporting event was John O'Leary in 1982. "It fascinates me how myself and the rest of the Irish guys underperform at this event," Harrington added. "We all would be delighted if any Irish guy was to win here to take the monkey off the back of the rest of us. Outside majors, the Irish Open is the one title for an Irish golfer to win."

It is a hard concept to grasp, but Darren Clarke, that most tranquilized of Irish players, believes he and his confederates might have been worrying themselves out of victory. "Maybe because it is the Irish Open we all try a little bit harder and it doesn't quite work," he said.

Certainly Clarke has not been that troubled in his preparation. Last week, he seemed happy to tell us, he lost money at Royal Ascot – Montgomerie was also at the meeting but he won – and played just a single round of golf. He mentioned this just after balancing his smouldering cigar on the edge of the table. Well, it was a substantial table.

There has even been time for a spot of nature watching before today's first round, and Clarke's story yesterday explained the high standard of windsurfing in Cork bay. "I'm staying in a lovely house which looks out across the bay, the harbour master's house," he said, "and I was outside having a coffee the other day when I saw three killer whales in the bay, about 150 yards away. They were big, even bigger than me." Well, this is the second largest natural harbour in the world.