Given the pressure of a major championship and the ferocity of the lay-out, by Padraig Harrington's own high standards, he was an accident waiting to happen over the past few days.

When the end came on Friday, it was swift and brutal. A triple bogey seven at the difficult ninth where Harrington found trouble with a pulled three wood off the tee, was followed by a calamitous run of bogey, double bogey and yet another triple bogey. It added up to a depressing total of nine over par for four holes.

Although the sight of the normally composed and patient Harrington floundering in the long grass was a rare one, even on a more forgiving course, there probably would have been no way back. At Oakmont where birdies are priceless commodities, all hope of making it through to the weekend was gone.

Harrington's 10-over-par 80 was the worst round of his 36 major championship appearances, and it could have ballooned to something truly horrendous had he not birdied the 16th as well as the punishing 18th. Perhaps he relaxed a little, played with more freedom, knowing missing the cut was a foregone conclusion.

As Angel Cabrera forged ahead to take the halfway lead in a major for the first time in his career, Harrington was redundant. Against the backdrop of a tie for seventh place at the recent Masters, as well as his fifth at last year's US Open, the exit was a bitter disappointment. Yet, he sensed it was coming.

"I know I was somewhere in the top-25 of the tournament going into the second round, but it really didn't feel that way at all. I hit some awful shots out there, and it was probably getting on my nerves too much. If I'd been a little more positive, maybe, but once things started going wrong I tried a little bit too hard. But what could I have done? Make the cut on 10 over, and slip into oblivion during the weekend."

The problems began on the practice range where he said he felt strangely ill at ease. He claimed he had been striking the ball well coming into the event, even though he had missed the cut in Memphis last week, however, whatever rhythm he had was gone by the start of play.

"I had prepared well no question about it, but if I'm looking for any answers, I just got knocked out of kilter on the range. The practice area is very awkwardly positioned, and when I got here I was hitting the ball well, but as the days went by, I started hitting it poorly. My alignment was a bit askew, so I was never very confident and eventually, I got a little down on myself."

Certainly, there was evidence in the first round that he was losing several shots to the left, and given his lack of form, 73 was a decent effort.

He was holding on by his fingertips on Friday, until the ninth hole where his tournament unravelled to leave Graeme McDowell as the only Irish representative in the final 36 holes.

"Dropping nine shots in four holes, I don't think I've ever done that before. I found trouble, and I compounded it. It's easy enough to make a big number out there. At the end, I was trying to make the cut, and maybe five or six years ago I wouldn't have been unhappy, let's say, to be in the middle of the field, but I really didn't feel like I was playing well enough to push on from there. I found it very hard to focus because I was too caught up in what my swing was doing. I was ready to play, but the swing wasn't there."

Still, if simply making cuts at majors is understandably no longer the raison d'etre of the world number 11, the US Open is always a tournament where surviving until the weekend is more important than usual. Such is the punishing nature of the course, and so quickly can a round turn bad as Harrington found out to his cost on Friday, that any player within six or seven strokes of the lead has a realistic chance of victory.

Take South Africa's Tim Clark who made the cut without a single birdie on his card over the first two rounds.

Clark began yesterday's third round eight shots adrift of Cabrera, but not out of contention.

After his wins in America in 2005 and last year's European Tour order of merit victory, Harrington has now geared his career to peaking at the major championships.

It appeared as if his game was in good shape during his Irish Open success, but in truth his form on the PGA Tour since the Masters with a tie for 43rd at the Wachovia Championship and a tie for 52nd at the Players Championship has been modest.

Like one or two others, he could have put this failure down to the severity of the course, but he wasn't using Oakmont as an excuse. "I thought the set-up was excellent, it's been very fair. Saying that, it wouldn't take much for the USGA to make this the hardest course in the world.

It could easily be made that way."

In the past, Harrington has survived with a faulty swing.

But not this time, not at Oakmont.