It hasn't been easy for Tiger or Paddy, but here they are

LEMONT, Ill. -- One says he's having trouble on the greens, so different than what he's used to seeing out here. He once had the angles figured out; now he's learning on-the-go like the rest of the field. And the knobs scattered among the greens also have offered an unexpected challenge.

The other is having trouble off the tee, his confidence level with the driver shaky at best. It all started last week at, of all places, the driving range. The angles were not to his liking, and consequently, he has struggled to trust any shot off the tee.

And yet both go into the weekend at the BMW Championship casting the largest shadows at Cog Hill, threatening to recreate the battle they waged last month at Firestone.

Tiger Woods and Padraig Harrington will not be paired together in Saturday's third round at the BMW Championship, but they might as well be. The multiple major winners will garner the majority of the attention, with Tiger as co-leader (with Mark Wilson) in the final group, and Harrington (in a tie for third, one shot back) in the penultimate group.

That major pedigree helps explain why both players find themselves entering the weekend with a chance of winning the third leg of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup. Things have not gone smoothly for either one at Cog Hill, and yet they've shown the ability to post low numbers under less-than-comfortable circumstances.

For Woods, the focus is on the greens. His putter hasn't been at 100 percent efficiency through the first two Playoffs events. Ordinarily, Cog Hill would be just the remedy, considering it's a course he has won four PGA TOUR events on.

But Cog Hill has been redesigned since the last time Woods played here, and the greens are unfamiliar to his eye. He said the biggest adjustment he's had to make this week is trying to figure out the best places to miss approach shots this week.

"The greens are so different," he said after shooting a second-round 67 that puts him at 7 under for the tournament. "Where you used to be able to miss it, the angles -- those are not the angles anymore."

And yet Woods needed just 25 putts in the second round, 52 through the first two rounds, some of those putts with multiple breaks over knobs in the greens that he's never seen before. Just two other players (Luke Donald, Brandt Snedeker) have required less.

Meanwhile, Harrington has had several adventures with his driver. On Friday, for instance, he arrived at the 18th tee box with a chance at his second consecutive bogey-free round, but he hit a poor drive that went out-of-bounds, forcing him to play a provisional ball. That he rolled in an 18-foot putt for bogey was a moral victory, leaving him with a second consecutive 68.

Harrington said his problems off the tee actually began at the Deutsche Bank Championship last week.

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Tiger Woods and Padraig Harrington played seven rounds together in August.

"I really lost my confidence on the range," he said. "... There was something about the angle of the range last week that I didn't like, and I hit a number of poor shots on the range. And every day I went to the golf course, I wasn't feeling good about my driving."

Yet he still had the Deutsche Bank in his own hands on Sunday before a double bogey at the 12th hole sealed his fate.

Harrington knows it sounds odd to be blaming angles at the range for his problems with the driver, but as he acknowledged Friday, "I'm very peculiar when it comes to driving ranges."

He hasn't been able to shake the problem this week, although he made a point of saying it's a carryover effect, not the Cog Hill range. Through two rounds, Harrington has hit just 11 of 28 fairways -- 39.28 percent, tied with J.B. Holmes for the worst percentage in the field. So how the heck has he just suffered one bogey through the first two rounds and is just one shot off the lead?

"I would like to tell you that the two 68s were totally orthodox," Harrington said.

Not much has been orthodox for either Harrington or Woods. Yet here they are, making noise again, just like at the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, when they battled hard on Sunday before Harrington blew up late and Tiger went on to win.

Since then, they've made a combined six starts, with three top-2 finishes and another tie for fourth. At The Barclays two weeks ago, they were both in the hunt on Sunday, each coming up a shot short.

Despite whatever issues they're having this week, It's not hard to imagine them dueling again on the back nine this Sunday at Cog Hill.